Our Houston Texans ended up winning the AFC South, and will host Indianapolis next Saturday in the first wild card playoff game. Anyone who says they expected them to win the division after starting out 0 and 3, is just lying.
Today, Honey and I celebrate our fifty-fourth anniversary. It was on this date in 1964 that we became husband and wife - easily the best decision of my life.
The secret of our long and successful union? For my part it's - marry your best friend, someone who will be loving, supportive, forgiving, always in your corner - then don't die and don't do anything so outrageous it chases her off.
There is still one milestone to go - Honey and I celebrate our 54th wedding anniversary the day after tomorrow - but for all intents and purposes, 2018 is pretty well in the books.
Looking back on the year, there were some very positive happenings and some that were very painful. It probably balances out somewhere in the middle - for us, 2018 was probably a wash.
On the plus side -
Honey had successful cataract surgery last spring, and can see without glasses for the first time in over 60 years.
We got a back porch and a pergola built, and we love it.
I installed a shooting berm out by the woods, and really like that, too.
We both made it through another year without any significant health issues.
Minuses -
The Graffs, the best neighbors anyone could ever hope to have, moved to Ohio.
All of the St Augustine grass we bought when we got the pergola is dead. We followed the best advice we could find to the letter, and it's still as dead as if we'd sprayed it with Roundup.
We lost our black-and-tan dachshund, Tinker, on December third.
Here's hoping that your 2018 was at least as good, and that 2019 is better!
Our Camellias are blooming just in time for Christmas. The internet says that they can bloom anytime from fall to spring, but I don't remember them blooming for Christmas before. Anyway, here are a couple of Christmas blooms to brighten your holiday....
A lady named Barbara Beversdorf went to the Aransas Wildlife Refuge yesterday to try to get some pictures of Whooping Cranes. She was at Lamar, Texas, bordering the reserve when she got this shot.
No post since Friday, but things have been happening.
The right front tire on our truck has had a very slow leak for the past month. I'd inflate it to 45 lbs., and a week or ten days later, it would be at 28. I pulled it off Thursday and inspected it for nails, etc. but found no punctures, soI took it to NTB on Friday, and asked them to rotate the tires and check that one (suspected the valve). They actually gave me a no-charge receipt, and said when they brought it back out I could just get in and go.
Then they called me back in to look at the tire.
Soapy water revealed three tiny leaks - all in a row along the center line of the tire. They said they could try to patch them, but the pattern indicated an internal failure that could prove catastrophic.
$250 later, with a new tire and a new receipt, I headed for the barber shop. At least my haircut didn't involve any unexpected expenses.
We have a window box over the kitchen sink that houses three orchids and a couple of spider webs. Lately, it has also had at least two, usually three, lizards hiding out between the screen and the glass. I can only assume they catch enough to eat since they are always there.
I was talking yesterday about things we learn and remember, even when we never use them in our lives. Here's another example for you - in tech school we were taught a mnemonic to help us remember the order and value of color bars on resistors. I can still remember the mnemonic, but pulling up colors and their values takes some thought. The mnemonic was: Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly (for) Gold (and) Silver, and the corresponding colors were Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Gray, White, Gold and Silver.
One of the answers (questions?) on Jeopardy yesterday mentioned the Boy Scouts in the clue. The correct response, which nobody got, was Trustworthy. Not only did I get the answer, I found myself reciting that a scout is
Trustworthy,
Loyal,
Helpful,
Friendly,
Courteous,
Kind,
Obedient,
Cheerful,
Thrifty,
Brave,
Clean,
and Reverent,
something I hadn't said out loud, or even consciously thought of, in over sixty years!
If you watched the Jets' first possession in yesterdays game, you probably thought it was all over, that the Texans could take this one to the bank. The Jets not only went three and out, they lost yardage on all three plays - including J J Watt's first sack of the day.
Our home team did end up winning, 29-22, but it was a seriously ugly game - certainly not one for the weak of heart fan. Even though the Texans only trailed once (briefly) in the fourth quarter, somehow they made you feel they were right on the edge of losing the entire game.
Still it was a win, and even an ugly win looks good in the record books.
The Liberty Hill Panthers won another football game last night, 44-41, in a game that came down to the final seconds. The win ended the Carthage Bulldogs' run at a third straight title and a seventh state championship.
My grandson, Nash Robinson, plays for Liberty Hill, and the championship game being played at AT&T Stadium next week will be icing on the cake. He is a life long Cowboys fan (can't help it, it's his father's fault) and playing in their stadium has to be a dream come true.
They'll meet Waco La Vega in the state championship game, and it won't be easy. La Vega won their semifinal game against Decatur by a score of 53 to nothing!
Joined our old pals, the Sheltons, for dinner last night to celebrate our anniversaries. We went to Shogun for the hibachi - the good Shogun in Atascosita, not the poor imitation recently opened in Valley Ranch. Our cook last night was a Filipino of Chinese ancestry, but he cooked as fine a meal as any Japanese chef. Travis and Cheryl were married on December 18, 1964, and Honey and I were married ten days later. I was his Best Man, and he was mine. If we were being extremely picky, we would dine on December 23, but that day always seems to interfere with Christmas parties, preparations, etc. Besides, after 54 years, we can pick any day in December and be off by about one half of one percent- 31 days divided by 54 years is 0.574, but if you divide by 648 months, it equals 0.0478.
I have absolutely no artistic ability myself, but have an inordinate number of highly talented Facebook Friends. Most of them paint, but some also work in other media. This is for all of them....
I decided to "unfriend" someone on Facebook today.
Not because of political rants, but because he had become obsessive about posting all the details of every segment of his life - too much information posted much too often. It had become impossible to open Facebook without seeing two or three posts from this person on every page.
I had never actually met this individual, but I had followed him through failing health, an almost fatal heart attack and a divorce - I actually worried about him, and wished him well. I was pleased when he seemed to have recovered and appeared to be getting his life back on track, but somewhere along the way he seems to have lost his mind - or at least his appreciation for what might be appropriate to share with the rest of mankind on an hourly basis.
I still wish him well, but he is going to have to live his life without me in the grandstands.
FM 1485 is closed at the East Fork of the San Jacinto River due to high water. It is following a pretty typical pattern - a day or so after heavy rains, the river comes out of its banks and crosses the road. It seems counterintuitive that the road doesn't flood until the rains are gone and the sky is blue, but it takes 24 hours for all the water upstream to make it to this point.
I've watched this happen for over 40 years, and every time it happens I wonder why they don't just build the road a foot and a half higher - maybe add a couple sets of culverts.
Today is a windy, overcast day with a forecast high temperature in the 40s - generally speaking, it's just an ugly day with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I started to say that I have always hated days like this, and then I remembered that one day.... The summer before, while installing air conditioning at the Chambers County Courthouse and Jail, my dad had become friends with the County Sheriff and the local Game Warden. It was a day just like this when they took us out into the rice fields south of Anahuac to hunt geese. We all got our limit, and it is one of my fondest memories of time spent with my father.
Every year I try to post a Christmas song to help you counteract the effects of hour upon hour of Little Drummer Boy. This year, I considered something from an album of Filipino Christmas favorites, but settled on Hey Sis, it's Christmas from RuPaul's Christmas album.
This picture is just about the only view of the George H W Bush funeral that was not shown on TV. It's a shot from inside the train car that carried his casket to Aggieland yesterday, and it shows a few of the thousands who lined the train tracks to pay their respects.
After days of around-the-clock coverage, I came away with two opposing feelings - I was impressed by the pomp, the precision of the military and the eloquence of those who eulogized the late president, and I am more convinced than ever that I do not want a funeral of any sort.
Honey and I agreed years ago that we did not want funeral services. I had felt that way for quite a while, but I think she actually said it first. If we didn't include this in our wills, we should have - please consider this formal notice.
I realize that funerals are not actually for the dead, but for those left behind, and that's OK. But - if you have something to say to or about me, I'd rather you say it now.
Last Tuesday , I wrote about our black and tan dachshund, Tinker, and how we were afraid she was about to leave us. Unfortunately, our fears were justified.
In spite of several trips to the vet, she continued to go downhill. We had another appointment scheduled for this morning, but after this past weekend decided she had suffered enough. I took her in yesterday and had her euthanized. Her passing was quiet and dignified, and I brought her home and buried her at the edge of our woods.
Tinker loved everyone, but she was Honey's dog from the day we got her - her constant companion for over fourteen years. Now she is waiting at the Rainbow Bridge...
My father-in-law was a great guy, one of those folks who never met a stranger, but he told the worst jokes. I was thinking of one of his favorites, and it led to this.... He tried to be the class clown But he told the worst jokes in town Really horrible ones, Like “If your nose runs And your feet smell, you’re built upside down.”
There are a couple variations of the quote, but Mark Twain is credited with saying "The reports of my death are an exaggeration."
which leads to today's topic.
Is it possible to grieve the loss of someone or something that is still around?
The answer is a definite yes!
We proved it this past weekend.
Our dachshunds are getting old - they turned 14 this past summer, which is pushing the limits for their expected lifespan. In addition, Tinker had been steadily losing weight for the past four years. She has remained active and otherwise healthy, but she has dropped from a maximum weight of just over ten pounds to seven and a quarter, and the vet has no idea why. We've worried about that, but not too much since otherwise she has seemed happy and healthy.
Friday, all she wanted to do was sleep. At first, we just assumed that she was as tired as we were after a whirlwind trip to Bertram for Thanksgiving, but Saturday she was worse. She was lethargic, and when she did move she was weak and a little clumsy. Sunday was just as bad, and Honey and I were afraid Tinker was on the way out. Honey even asked me to get up first to let them out because she did not want to find her dead.
I called the vet when they opened on Monday and got the first available appointment. By the time we got there, Tinker was better - a long way from 100%, but noticeably better.
Other than being slightly dehydrated, the vet could find nothing wrong with her.The crisis seems to have passed.
We know that we will lose her sometime in the rapidly approaching future, but for now, we'll try to be grateful for the joy she has brought us over the years.
No post yesterday because we were kind of busy. We went to our daughter Cheryl's place for Thanksgiving. We don't actually eat at Cheryl's - we go the Gene's sister's house for dinner with all of his family. Years ago, his sister declared that we were family, too, and were not only welcome, but expected. Door to door is 217 miles and - with 75 mph speed limit most of the way - just under four hours on the road. Four hours up there, about five hours eating and visiting, and four hours back makes for a long, but satisfying day.
My paternal grandparents were William Andrew Couch and Ellie Northcutt Couch, but I always knew them as Mam-ma and Pop. I can remember attending a family reunion when I was five or six, and being totally confused. When strangers (cousins I had never met or even knew existed) talked about Uncle Andy and Ain't (Aunt) Ellie, it took me a full day to realize they were referring to my grandparents.
Today is the day that a pair of Thanksgiving Turkeys receive their presidential pardon. That's this year's pair in their room at Washington's Willard Hotel, where rooms run from $180 to $800 a night. The turkeys hail from western Minnesota and were raised by National Turkey Federation Chairman Carl Wittenburg and his wife Sharlene, along with five young women from the Douglas County 4-H chapter. If you've ever wondered what happens to the birds after they are pardoned, this year they are headed for Gobbler's Rest, an exhibit at Virginia Tech, where they are cared for by a team of students and veterinarians. That doesn't guarantee a long and happy life - few of the previously pardoned birds have lasted more than a year. As one expert put it, they were raised for the table, not longevity.
Okay, I know it's not even Thanksgiving yet, but...
Honey decided it was time to get a new fake tree for this Christmas. Our old one is so old that if it was real, it would probably be about 50 feet tall by now, and it has been a challenge to keep the box it came in together for years.
We found one on line at Hobby Lobby that was an ideal size to sit on the window box in the living room. It comes with pre-wired lights and little pine cones, and the box it comes in is much smaller and easy to handle. I don't know if we will leave it up - it is pretty early - but I put it together just to be sure it had all its parts and that everything works.
Here at the old Boggy Thicket we have dozens of birds, hundreds of squirrels and at least one rabbit. After seeing no rabbits at all for several years, we spotted this one a few weeks ago, and I actually got a picture yesterday morning. It seems to live in the middle of our largest azalea bed, and comes out to graze in the early mornings and just before dusk.
I was sad to learn last week that a girl I dated in high school had died. Considering my age, and the number of girls I dated - junior high to college - she probably wasn't the first, but she is the first I have heard about.
Paulette was a sweet girl, very shapely if slightly overweight - the term zaftig comes to mind - and when I first moved to Alvin several of my friends encouraged me to ask her out. I didn't, and I later learned that, because we both wore braces at the time, they were betting that we would get hung up which they thought would be hilarious.
We did have one date, and how it came about was unusual to say the least.
Joyce, the girl I was dating at the time, and Paulette were best friends. Joyce had delivered a patriotic speech at the American Legion that won her an expense-paid trip to the United Nations in New York. She suggested that Paulette and I should go out while she was away.
I was prepared for a very Platonic date - a movie at the local drive in and maybe a stop by the Dairy Queen before I took her home, but by the time I got parked and had the speaker hung in the window, Paulette was all over me! Things did not get totally out of control, but it did get pretty steamy for a while.
Later I wondered if this had been some kind of test, and whether or not I had passed.
Oh, for what it's worth, our braces never did hang up.
No, this doesn't have anything to do with the movie, although I would gladly watch it again today. This is about the weather. We had the first freeze of the season overnight, and yesterday there were snow flurries at the weather station at IAH, making it the earliest snowfall in Houston history. We are enjoying experiencing weather we don't normally get until January - really makes you hate Global Warming.
November 11th got me to thinking about my time in the military, and brought to mind a true story I thought I would share today.
I came out of basic training with a MOS of 71R20. broadcast information specialist, and was assigned to Ft Hood as the radio-TV voice of the 2nd Armored Division. Among my duties, I was responsible for recording radio and TV "Home-towners" - interviews that would be sent to the soldier's home town stations for broadcast.
I also did quite a few interviews with soldiers returning from Viet Nam for publication the Armored Sentinel, the base newspaper. It was one of these that almost cost me my security clearance and my job - in fact, I was told that I might potentially end up in Leavenworth!
The subject of the interview was a sergeant who had served in Nam as a photographer on a helicopter. He was operating a highly sophisticated infrared camera as they flew over the jungles searching for Viet Cong hideouts. When the camera detected a hot spot they would mark its location and report back to base.
I typed up the story and submitted it downstairs to the sergeant major who ran the Armored Sentinel office. The next day, I got a visit from two men in civilian clothes who identified themselves as members of the Army Security Agency. They told me my story would never be published because it described equipment and tactics that were highly classified.
I was able to show them a year-old story in Popular Mechanics that described the camera and how it worked. They said that didn't matter, and they had no control what got published by civilians. Then they asked, " Did Sergeant Xxxx use the term 'hot spot' when he told you about his job?"
"No, I don't think he did."
"Well that term is also classified. If you didn't get it from him, where did you get it?"
I stared at him for a moment, then replied "What the hell else would you call it."
The story never made it into the paper, but the ASA guys went away and I was able to keep doing my job.
Honey and I were both members of a very small percentage of our generation who had never seen Easy Rider.
Produced by Peter Fonda and directed by Dennis Hopper, it has often been described as the definitive movie about the late 60s counter-culture. It gets great reviews - five stars on Turner Classic Movies, and 92% on Rotten Tomatoes - so when I saw it was playing on TV, we recorded it.
A cold, wet weekend seemed the perfect time to watch it, so we did - at least we tried. We only made it through the first half hour or so. We probably wouldn't have watched that long except that we thought we were supposed to enjoy it, so we had to be missing something.
We finally just admitted that the movie was crap, deleted it and watched something else.
I'm not sure what that says about us, but, whatever it is, I can live with it.
I never thought much of Lyndon Johnson, but I had a quote of his posted on my wall at Ft. Hood in 1967....
War is always the same. It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate. Therefore, to know war is to know that there is still madness in the world.
Chevy had success with their very popular Nomad, a two door (three if you count the back) station wagon, and for the 1957 model year, Ford introduced their version - what they called the Del Rio Ranch Wagon.
It's what my mother was driving when we moved to Liverpool, and I have a lot of fond memories of that car.
Ours was buckskin tan and white, and the interior featured fake leather upholstery decorated with brands. It sounds cheesy, but it actually looked pretty cool.
I hadn't thought about it in years until I saw yesterday that the Hot Rod folks had picked a 57 Del Rio Ranch Wagon as 2018's Street Rod of the Year. Street Rod
The votes have been counted and I'm pretty sure there is nobody at all who is totally satisfied with the results.
Democrats gained control of the House
Republicans increased their majority in the Senate
Ted Cruz held on to his senate seat, but Dems are already talking about Beto for President in 2020.
In what was, to me, the biggest surprise of the night, Harris County Judge Ed Emmett lost to 27 year old political newcomer Lina Hidalgo. Latest totals have her winning by 49 to 48%, with the remaining votes going to Libertarian Ed Gatlin.
I don't think I ever saw a political ad for Hidalgo, and only one or two for Emmett, so I didn't know anything about her. She is a naturalized citizen who was born in Colombia, and raised in Peru and Mexico. She holds degrees from Stanford and Harvard, and was endorsed by several unions and by left-wing groups like the Working Families Party.
Election day has finally arrived. I'm cautiously optimistic about the results here in my area, but the polls have been all over the place, so it is probably going to be a long night waiting for results.
One thing that ought to make everyone happy is that we will no longer be bombarded by obnoxious and intentionally misleading political ads in TV.
Unfortunately, they will just be replaced by all the ads for Medicare supplement insurance. Thank goodness for DVR or I would not be able to watch television for at least another month.
Tonight is the night we set our clocks back an hour as we begin our annual excursion into (or as Honey pointed out - more accurately back out of) Daylight Saving Time. I've noticed that there are not as many complaints as usual this year - maybe because we are in the middle of such a contentious election. In any case, it's going to happen whether you like the idea or not.
I am proud to say that I have friends whose views go all across the political spectrum.
Granted, those whose politics most closely resemble mine are generally easier to get along with, but I've learned that there are some really interesting, clever and well-intentioned folks whose political opinions are (to my way of thinking) just flat-out wrong.
An awful lot of political opinion depends on how you were raised, your economic situation, religious beliefs etc. What I call where you're coming from.
Here's a great illustration of how your point of view affects your opinion. The dancer on the right spins clockwise while the one on the left spins counter-clockwise. The one in the middle turns left or right depending on which of her partners you are looking at.
Politics is often like that, and sometimes just as hard to determine what is right.
Yesterday's weather predictions were accurate for once. The weather for Halloween night was every bit as bad as the forecasters had warned.
We didn't have a single trick-or-treater yesterday- haven't seen one since last Saturday's hayride, but that is par for the course. I don't think we have had a goblin, a princess or a super-hero knock on our door on Halloween for at least ten years.
That leads to a quandary. We always buy enough candy to have some left over "just in case" and it always gets left over.
My A1-C has been normal for years, but, as a former diabetic, I don't have any business eating a whole lot of candy, and Honey's idea of splurging on candy would be eating one of those miniature sized Snickers that come in those big Halloween bags. The result is that we will probably have candy in the cupboard well into 2019.
Today is the 80th anniversary of the Orson Welles production of War of the Worlds on CBS radio. It was presented in the form of a news broadcast, and in spite of disclaimers broadcast before the show, it scared the bejeezus out of a large segment of the American population. As of today, the Martians still haven't landed, but "Fake News" is still around.
I have been surprised by how many of my Facebook friends share the same birthdays. It seems like, if there is one birthday on a given day, there will be two or three. Maybe this is the reason why:
If just 23 people are in a room, there's a better-than-even chance at least two of them have the same birthday.
This birthday paradox comes from a careful analysis of the probabilities involved. If two people are in a room together, then there's a 364/365 chance they do not have the same birthday (if we ignore leap years and assume that all birthdays are equally likely), since there are 364 days that are different from the first person's birthday that can then be the second person's birthday.
If there are three people in the room, then the probability that they all have different birthdays is 364/365 x 363/365: As above, once we know the first person's birthday, there are 364 choices of a different birthday for the second person, and this leaves 363 choices for the third person's birthday that are different from those two.
Continuing in this fashion, once you hit 23 people, the probability that all 23 have different birthdays drops below 50%, and so the probability that at least two have the same birthday is better than even.
Today, Honey and I celebrate our fifty-fourth anniversary. It was on this date in 1964 that we became husband and wife - easily the best decision of my life.
