S.F.D.H.

 If you're a plumber, S.F.D.H. does not stand for Santa Fe Department of Health, or State Farm Division of Housing, or even Stephen Foster Ditty Holder. If you're a plumber, S.F.D.H. stands for Sh*t Flows Down Hill - words to live by, and all a plumber really needs to know.

I mention this because we have been dealing with a slow draining sewer line for the past few months, and maybe -just maybe - we have finally got the problem solved.

As you might assume with a name like the Boggy Thicket, we sit on land with a very high water table - land that shifts with some regularity.  After almost 50 years, those shifts had played hob with our sewer pipe.   The pipe had buckled in several places, squeezed almost flat, and what should have been a straight pipe with a slight drop from the house to the septic tank looked more like the track of a roller coaster.  

We had expected to find roots causing problems, and we found a few, but the main culprit seems to have been the earth itself.  The original installation worked well for 40-plus years.  The repair doesn't have to last nearly that long to outlive me.

Price

I got a call the other night from an old friend I hadn't heard from in years.  Mark Price was my counterpart in Colorado, a technical trainer for Ikon. When he talks, he sounds like Foster Brooks, but he was and is super intelligent.

Some readers may want to stop here - what comes next might be considered obscene.

I met Mark twenty five years or so ago at a trainer's conference in Dallas.  A group of us were standing in the parking lot deciding where to go for dinner when one of the group said - "What do you call a restaurant with a one-legged waitress?"  

"IHOP"

Not to be outdone, I asked "What does here name tag read?" 

"Ilene."

Mark then said "She has a sister who works in the back and has no legs at all. They call her Consuelo." 

Pencil-Thin Moustache

 Yesterday evening, out of the blue, I started singing this song.  Hadn't thought of it in years, but now I can't get it out of my mind.

Lipstick On A -------

 

The big chill that hit us just over a month ago did a number on the azaleas here at the Boggy Thicket.  The bushes lost most of their leaves, and what leaves didn't fall off are shriveled and brown.  We weren't sure they were going to survive.

Now most of them are trying to bloom.  They look a little sad and somewhat macabre.  You've heard the saying about putting lipstick on a pig?  This is more like putting makeup on a skeleton.

St Pat

 

3.14.........

 

Superstitious - Part 3

 All that staring at the hummingbird feeders worked!  

We saw our first hummingbird this morning.

Sarge and Tulsa

 

When I was in elementary school, my folks had some good friends known as Sarge and Tulsa. 

Sarge worked with my dad and we often visited each other's homes for bar-b-cues, and even spent one week with them camping on Padre Island.  Once my Dad went into business for himself, he and Sarge  had a falling out - something work related - and I never saw them again.

Sarge was not a handsome man, in fact he was downright ugly.  Tulsa was a tall and lanky, rawboned woman, and maybe the only person on the planet with more acne scars than Sarge.  They might not have been the least physically attractive couple on earth, but they were in the running.

I mention this because, miraculously, they were the parents of the most beautiful baby I had ever seen - a child who grew into a gorgeous toddler.  This was a few years before the creepy beauty contests for pre-adolescent girls that blossomed in the 60s, but if they had been around, I have no doubt this kid could have been Little Miss Universe, or whatever.  She would have wiped the floor with the competition.

As far as I know, they only had the one child.  I guess anyone who hit the jackpot in the big gene lottery - especially if you looked like Sarge and Tulsa - might be hesitant to try again.

Superstitious Part 2

 If you saw yesterday's post, you know I am attempting to will the arrival of hummingbirds to the Boggy Thicket. 

No results yet, but I haven't given up.

Superstitious Behavior

 

Years ago, I had a college professor describe how a Skinner Box works.  

Rats are taught that if they press a bar, a food pellet will be released.  Once they are conditioned to press the bar, you can remove the food source and they will continue to push the bar in hopes of getting food.  He called this superstitious behavior, and said it is the same as Christians praying even though their prayers are seldom, if ever, answered.

We've often heard of athletes who use visualization - imagining themselves flying over the high jump bar or sinking the impossible putt.  I suppose that is another example of superstitious behavior - something that works just often enough that you would be tempted to try it again.

Lately I have been trying something similar.  

We put our hummingbird feeders out a week ago, and I have been staring at the feeders attempting to will the hummingbirds back.  

I'll let you know if it works.

VW Bus

 It may sound harsh, and maybe I'm just in a bad mood, but it occurred to me that if the Rapture occurred today nobody would notice - in fact, it might already have happened when you weren't looking.

One thing I'm sure of - you couldn't round up enough deserving souls in Harris County, Texas, to fill a Volkswagen bus.