Just Wow

Five Houston police undercover officers were injured yesterday - four of them shot - when they conducted a drug raid in southeast Houston.  The two drug dealers in the house, a man and a woman, were both shot and killed.
During the press conference last night, the Houston police chief revealed that one of the wounded officers had been shot twice before in the line of duty during his long career.
I don't know what to think about that - shot THREE times.
He is either a very slow learner, or he has more guts than the guy who ate the first raw oyster.

Hoskins Mound

Back in the 1950s, if you turned South off Texas Highway 35 onto Brazoria County Road 203, it would take you past Liverpool, Texas, and Lute's fishing camp on Chocolate Bayou, and miles of featureless coastal plains.  
Eventually, on the left just before you drove off into Chocolate Bay, you would encounter a massive yellow block, several stories high and several city blocks long.
What you were seeing was sulfur that had been mined from the Hoskins Mound salt dome.  From there it was loaded onto freight cars that often made trains a mile or so long.

Relief for Cabin Fever

Haven't posted for a few days - not because I was too busy, but because cabin fever had me in a steadily declining mood.  
It has been too cold, too wet or too windy to try to accomplish anything outside, so we've just sat around and moped.
Yesterday we put an end to that.  
We took a trip to Naskila Casino for a day at the slots machines.  We had a great time, and a great meal at the Timbers Grill.  Honey won more than I lost, and if we had stopped playing when we stopped to eat, we would have come home ahead.
Still, the small amount we did lose was an easily justified investment and a definite cabin fever cure.

Torx

Whenever we lose power here at the Boggy Thicket, our generator comes on automatically and everything continues to work normally until the lights come back on.  The generator does have a built-in 30 second time delay which means that our DirecTV receiver must go through a lengthy reset procedure, sometimes as much as five minutes, before we can get back to a show.

A few years ago, I bought an unlimited power supply (UPS) and put it on the circuit that feeds the DirecTV receiver.  That should have solved the problem - the TV reception continued without interruption - but the darn thing would beep until the power came back on.  The UPS help desk technician explained that the device was so sensitive that if the generator wasn't putting out electricity at precisely 60 cycles per second the UPS would beep and there was no way to turn it off.

When I decided to open it up and disconnect the little speaker, I discovered that it was held together with tamper-proof screws - little torx head screws that had a post in the middle so a normal torx bit would not work. I just let the UPS lie around for a year or two. Finally, when cleaning up after Harvey, I threw the darn thing away.

That  might have been the end of the story, but recently our little electric heater started getting noisy.  When I went to open it up to clean and lube the fan, I discovered that it had the same sort of tamper-proof screws.

Okay, enough is enough.  I found a whole set of torx bits with holes in them just for this type of screw.

I don't know if I'll be able to fix the heater, but I'll darn sure be able to get in it and find out.

Eclipse

For the first time in what seems like forever, we had a celestial event that was actually visible from the Boggy Thicket last night.  The skies were actually clear for the lunar eclipse.
As much as I have complained about clouds obscuring meteor showers, etc., you would think that I would have stayed up and watched, but I didn't.

We watched the start of the eclipse, then went to bed.  I woke up about 12:30, and went out in time to see the end, but we totally missed the part where the moon was completely obscured.
Oh well, maybe next time.

Very Preliminary

We had a great phone conversation with our old friends and former next door neighbors the Graffs yesterday, and picked a tentative date to go see them later this year.  

After we got off the phone, I got on the computer and began planning our trip.  

From our house to theirs is about 1350 miles, so I'm allowing for stops near Texarkana, Memphis, Bowling Green and Cincinnati, which would average out to about 270 miles per day.

We really like Corps of Engineers parks (with our Senior Pass, full hookup campsites are only about $12 a night versus the $30 to $45 at commercial RV parks) and there are several of them that would be perfect for this trip. But when I went on line to check the facilities, I hit a wall - or the lack of one - the reservation site is currently unavailable due to the government shut down.

When Facts Become Lies

I used to wish I had a truth meter to test the statements we hear on the news every day, but I've come to realize that it would be practically worthless.  

The problem is not so much the outright lies we hear, but the statements that are factual but deliberately designed to mislead.  That, and the fact that our news sources determine which stories they choose to report and what slant they put on them, makes it almost impossible for anyone to know what to believe.

A case in point from our current impasse over a border wall - 

A democratic senator pointed out (correctly) that the majority of illegal aliens in the country are actually people who came in legally but overstayed their visas.  She offered this as proof that the wall was useless.

My congressman, Dan Crenshaw, refuted that argument by saying (I'm paraphrasing) that if you had a migraine and a broken foot, you wouldn't ignore the foot just because it wouldn't help your headache.

Parsley

I spent the majority of my life convinced that I did not like parsley.  In fact, I considered it to be the most useless vegetable imaginable - then I discovered Italian flat parsley, something I could actually appreciate.

Back in the 60s, when parsley was being used as a garnish on almost every plate at almost every restaurant, I spent several hours at a Howard Johnson's restaurant in St. Paul discussing the idea of starting a business manufacturing reusable plastic parsley.  Yes, a certain amount of alcohol was involved, but we were convinced we were onto something that could make us a fortune.  We even got so far as discussing where to put our factory - Indonesia or Bangladesh - actually still East Pakistan back then. 

Flat parsley in a whole different ball game.  

Rather than tasting like soap, it has a crisp, clean taste that actually adds to salads, etc.  Its only drawback is that it looks a whole lot like cilantro, and you definitely don't want to use one where the other is called for.

A couple of weeks ago, our local Walmart was out of flat parsley, but did have live parsley for sale in little containers.  I bought some, but by the time I got it home it had wilted.  Honey decided to try to save it, and it looks like she may have succeeded.   

Red Wolves

A story made the news yesterday about coyotes on Galveston Island carrying the DNA of  red wolves.  The story said that the coyotes were about 40% wolf, and that the red wolf had been extinct in the wild for decades.

That decades part got to me - made me feel really old.  

That's because I can distinctly remember watching a mama wolf come down to the water to drink while I was fishing in Chocolate Bayou.  It was decades ago, probably about 1958, but it doesn't seem that long ago.

Bob the Plumber

A couple weeks ago, the toilet in the bathroom off our bedroom started acting up.  It either doesn't flush completely or it does, but it is sluggish.  
When it started, I ran a hose through the sewer line from the clean-out plug, but didn't find any blockages.  I finally decided it was because the entire septic system was waterlogged due to all the recent rain. It is true that it is waterlogged, but that doesn't completely explain why that particular toilet is acting up while the one in the hall bath is working normally.  Maybe that has something to do with where they are located on the sewer line.
Anyway, it was almost back to normal - then we got more rain Friday night.  Now it's back to its bad behavior.

Visit

We got a call from our daughter Cheryl a few minutes ago, and she says they are coming to visit tomorrow.
Really looking forward to seeing her and Gene.  It's been too long.

Too Good to Last

Considering that we were heading into the second week of January, Monday and Tuesday were just about perfect - the kind of days that have you thinking winter in Southeast Texas isn't so bad.  

We had clear skies and temperatures in the 70s.  Yesterday's high of 79 matched the record for the day.

Today, skies are still clear, but the wind is blowing and the temperature is 20 degrees cooler.  That might seem like heaven to folks from up North, but I'm ready for it to warm up again.

Hose Reel

Went to Home Depot today and bought a hose reel like the one above.  Now the only question is why I didn't get one years ago.

Squirrel Logic

We have a lot of squirrels here at the Boggy Thicket, and we have an awful lot of leaves on the ground, a carpet of leaves that is up to three inches deep in spots.  

That is why this struck us a funny.

There is a squirrel currently building a nest near the top of a big oak tree that grows just outside our back door.  The leaves are thick around the base of the tree, but several times we have seen the squirrel go outside the fence, gather a huge mouthful of leaves, then force the leaves and himself through the holes in the chain link to haul them up to the nest. 

To me, the leaves he selects look exactly like the ones that he runs across to gather leaves outside the fence, but I'm no expert.  Maybe he knows something I don't.

Jazmine

Last week in East Harris County, seven-year-old Jazmine Barnes was shot to death while sitting hon her mother's car. Family members described the shooter as a white guy in his thirties driving a red pickup truck. 
The case became a cause celebre across the country, with athletes donating to pay for her funeral and a huge reward offered for information leading to the killer's capture.
Yesterday, the case took an interesting turn.

Eric Black Jr., a 20 rear old has been charged with capital murder.  He allegedly admitted to driving the car and told officers where to find the murder weapon at his house. Larry Woodruffe, who Black identified as the shooter, has not yet been charged, but is currently in jail on another charge.

Tokyo Auction

The Junior Market Steer Auction at the Houston Livestock Show brings in a lot of cash.  The top price, and still a world record, was the $600,001 paid for the Grand Champion Steer in 2002.
But...
That doesn't hold a candle to what Japanese pay for Blue Fin Tuna. 

In today's auction that opens the 2019 Tuna season in Tokyo, a 278 kilo (613 pound) fish sold for 333.6 million yen.  That's about $5000 a pound, or 3.1 million dollars!

The tuna was bought by the Kiyomura Corp., which runs the Sushizanmai restaurant chain across Japan, placed the winning bid, and by the time you read this, the fish may already be eaten - the Japanese do like their sushi fresh.

Rodeo

Back in the stone age, when I was a kid, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo would only have one headliner for the entire run of the show - someone like Roy Rogers or Gene Autry who could and did pack the arena every night.  

Lately, they feature a different act every night, and this year's lineup was officially announced last night.  It was leaked last weekend, but not officially confirmed until yesterday.
Here they are:

February
25 Kacey Musgraves, 6:45 p.m.
26 Prince Royce, 6:45 p.m.
27 Brooks & Dunn, 6:45 p.m.
28 Luke Bryan, 6:45 p.m.

March
1 Cardi B, 6:45 p.m.
2 Turnpike Troubadours, 3:45 p.m.
3 Panic! At The Disco, 3:45 p.m.
4 Old Dominion, 6:45 p.m.
5 Camila Cabello, 6:45 p.m.
6 Luke Combs, 6:45 p.m.
7 Tim McGraw, 6:45 p.m.
8 ZEDD, 6:45 p.m.
9 Kane Brown, 3:45 p.m.
10 Los Tigres Del Norte, 3:45 p.m.
11 Zac Brown Band, 6:45 p.m.
12 Kings of Leon, 6:45 p.m.
13 Santana, 6:45 p.m.
14 Chris Stapleton, 6:45 p.m.
15 Cody Johnson, 6:45 p.m.
16 Brad Paisley, 3:45 p.m.
17 George Strait with Robert Earl Keen and Lyle Lovett, 7 p.m. (concert only) 

I know they are all supposed to be famous, top-notch entertainers, but I only recognized eleven of them, and probably wouldn't pay to see but four or five.

Yoga - "Happy Baby"

I just read an article about the health benefits of a Yoga position known as the "Happy Baby." 

Apparently, if you lie on your back with your feet in the air and rock from side to side, it does wonders for circulation, back pain and even digestion.  

I have no idea if it works, but the article did remind me of a very old joke:

Two young housewives were having an afternoon drink when one said, "Here comes my husband with a dozen long-stem roses.  I just know I'll be on my back all night with my feet in the air."
To which the other replied, "Don't you own a vase?"

Trailer

I have a very old little utility trailer that I inherited from my father-in-law.  It has literally been on its last legs for the last few years - the front third of the floor is rotted away, the tires go flat in a week or less - well, you get the picture.  The last thing to fail would require welding, and I no longer have a welder, so I have been looking for a replacement.
I found this trailer at Northern Tool for $198, and was seriously considering buying it.

Then they put it on sale for $169.  

It comes as a kit.  

The whole thing comes in a box that is one foot by a foot and a half by five feet, and the assembly instructions are some of the worst I've ever read.  I started on it yesterday, spent over an hour  this morning undoing stuff I thought it said to do, and now have it looking more-or-less like a trailer.  I should have it completed in another hour or so.

New Year

Another year has come and gone, and here's hoping that 2019 will be a great one.
I was thinking about 2018 when Honey said "I can't believe that 19 years ago I was sitting in my office at Beaumont Baptist Hospital waiting to see if Y2K would cause our computer system to crash."