A Real Good Day

Today was a real good day.

GA and I went to see "White Christmas" at the Theatre Under the Stars, or TUTS, a non-profit but professional theatre. It's one of GA's favorite Christmas movies, so she has wanted to see the stage production ever since she saw it announced when we moved here. It's very nice, and at the end, they have it snow on the entire audience during the finale and final bows. As an extra blessing, the three seats directly between us and the stage were empty - no-shows. So we had a clear view of the entire show.

On the way home, I discovered that hwy 288, which is convenient to our house, makes a direct connection to Interstate 45, which goes north to Dallas. This will mean a shorter, more convenient trip to Wichita Falls when I go to visit family and friends.

We got back to the plantation just in time to swing by the amphitheater to see the living nativity, which turned out to actually be more of a Christmas pageant with live animals, as the actors moved from place to place as the Christmas story from Luke was read, and carols were sung. They had sheep, goats and a very stubborn donkey led around among the angels and heavenly host and wise men and so forth - sorry, no lobster at this production - and this little boy spent the entire performance dancing around and tossing his little shepherd hat up in the air and fetching it, and falling down and rolling in the grass. The donkey, who was constantly fighting Joseph about where he was supposed to be - you know how actors can be - decided to poop right in front of the bales of hay. And here came the little boy, tossing his hat, and rolling around in the grass... and into the donkey poop. He kept right on dancing and tossing his hat.

After the nativity, we drove to some of the wealthier neighborhoods to see how they had decorated, and many of the lights were brightly and tastefully done. One house, though, reminded me of the house in Deck the Halls: not only could you see it from space, I bet people who saw the satellite image were asking which bright spot was Houston.

Sometimes I really like living here.

Brilliant criminals

Crime is low in our area, especially given that we're near Houston.

But when we do have crime, it's at least entertaining. I have to share the latest one, which was in Missouri City. This guy stole a GPS out of somebody's car. He then sold it to a pawn shop. But before he sold it, he entered his own address to try it out. Yep it took him right to his own house alright.

It also took the police there, because he didn't bother deleting his address before he sold it.

As Bugs Bunny used to say, what a maroon.

you're tagged, maybe

Here are the directions: Just go to your 6th photo folder on your computer (or external hard drive, or memory card - pick one!), post the 6th photo, and hope you can remember the details to share them. Then tag 5 others.



This is the courtyard at the Hotel Ancira in Bustamante, NL, Mexico.
The car is a diesel Oldsmobile, which we drove to Mexico to visit the cave there.
I love that place.

I tag the first five bloggers to see this.
Acknowledge that you were tagged by leaving a comment with the url to your response.

Whoa

OK, that was weird.

We were watching this movie, The Bucket List, and the credits had just rolled at the end.

The lights went out at 8:37 pm, and then came back on two seconds later, and then our front door blew open.

So if either or both of us dies in our sleep tonight, you'll have a cool story to tell at the funeral.

Life is a box of chocolates, after the coupon

I just read a short blog about what two of my grandchildren did. Go read it. I'll wait here for you.

Now that's the quality I love in people everywhere - I love it when kids or grownups (but especially kids) do something different and original.

But this blog will intentionally be rambling and random. You know you love it.

This past week I went to visit my best friends in the whole world, back in my old hometown of Wichita Falls. It was a short visit, centered around seeing the play that they are both in, Move Over Mrs. Markham, which is a British farce, only they Americanized it because most of the cast wasn't able to handle the accent. I found it most enjoyable (and it is still playing to sold out audiences), and all the more so since I played Mr. Markham in that play and in that same theatre many years ago, when I still had dark hair.

While there, I met their new outside cat, named Princess, who looks and acts so much like a cat I used to have that I couldn't help but pet it and coo at it.

We watched a movie together (not with the cat, but with the family) - "21," which is about some MIT guys doing a card counting thing in Las Vegas and making tons of money. There is a scene where the professor is explaining to the class about probabilities and how change affects them. So he describes a game show where you're supposed to choose the best door out of three. A student chooses door number 1. Now the professor reminds the class that the odds are 33.3 percent that he has chosen the correct door, but - now the game show host reveals that door number 3 is not the best door, and is therefor out of the equation. Would he like to change his mind?

The student says yes, and now he goes for door number 2, because its probability is now - I forget the percentage, but it is higher than the obvious 50%. And the professor agrees, and praises him, and now wants him to go be a card counter in Vegas. And I'm all like "what???"

I was willing to agree that there are probably some mathematical principles that are way beyond me - I know that there are other dimensions besides the four that are obvious to us - but this was nonsense, or so it seemed to me, and still does.

Suppose you have the same scenario, only this time you have two students participating. One chooses door 1, the other chooses door 2. The game show host takes door 3 out of the equation, as before. Do the two students now switch doors, because each door is now greater than 50% likely to be the correct door? I would love for someone to explain to me how 1 out of 2 can possibly be anything but 50%.

But back to the family of my friends. One of their daughters is almost certain to be a semi-finalist merit scholar or whatever you call that, which doesn't really surprise me because she is so brilliant. Both daughters are, of course, incredibly smart and visually attractive in the bargain.

After the show Thursday night, the plan was to hit the backyard hot tub, so as to enjoy the near freezing temperatures and high winds that Wichita Falls was providing for us. But the female half of the partnership had to back out due to work interfering - honest - and that would have left two guys in the hot tub, and that would have been too... you know. The G word.

It was probably all for the best, since I was getting sleepy already and I had to leave early the next morning for my long drive back to Houston.

I wonder if my life would have been any different if either of my two brothers had been creative enough to want to sell me on a treadmill while playing store?

****

Update... OK, a computer geek in Midland explained it to me, though it wasn't clear in the movie. The game show host can't open your door, whether it's wrong or right. So if you have the correct door already, he has two doors to choose from. If you have the wrong door, however, he can only choose one door to open.

So your choice being wrong or right affects the door he opens, which in turn slightly affects the odds of your door being right.

to guitar or not to guitar

To guitar or not to guitar, that is the question.

If you have known me for thirty years or more, then you know that I used to play guitar back in the day. I had a fabulous Gibson SG-I, with a perfect fret board and the easiest action you could ask for while playing.

I played in a little Christian rock band very briefly, led by Bill Lee (I wonder if he's still around), and I've forgotten the name of the band. We were actually pretty good - each of us had written a song or two, and this particular one that I wrote had a "heavy" sound, and used the lyrics from a hymn out of the Baptist Hymnal.

This was in 1971 or so, and there was no such thing as a Contemporary Christian bin at the record store, and in fact, most churchy types considered rock music to be of the devil, and to be shunned at all cost. Annie Herring wasn't recording yet, and it would be another few years before we would hear Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music, by Larry Norman. So this was a cutting edge thing to do. I'm not saying we were the first, but I am saying that we were blazing our own trail through the Christian music wilderness.

What happened was that I was singing with a church sponsored youth group at Eden Hills Baptist Church, and we quite innocently had included in our repertoire a popular selection from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar - which was admittedly not even close to being doctrinally correct, though we hadn't really considered that. We were doing popular songs modified to be sort of Christian in nature - for example, I'm a Believer, the Monkees' hit, with a few altered lyrics.

We got invited to some little Assembly of God church which was doing some Sunday afternoon festival, and they wanted us to represent what the youth of today was doing musically. We sang I Don't Know How to Love Him, and one of the southern gospel groups walked out. Walked out! To their credit, they refrained from holding up crosses and trying to cast out our demons, but it was pretty darn rude when you consider that we were invited, paid our own way there, and we were kids for crying out loud. Well, practically kids.

Actually, all but one of them walked out - Bill Lee stayed in, and he apologized for the rest of his group. And later, before their group split up (Bill Lee quit or was fired, who knows), I dropped by one of their rehearsals. There they were, the group who had indignantly walked out on us for singing unapproved music, drinking beer and telling dirty jokes and using profanity like it was the king's English. Except Bill, who spoke softly and could have been in church. My opinion of the gospel music industry was dropping like a rock.

After their group fell apart, Bill thought it would be interesting to form a new group with some of us - me on guitar or bass, and some other people we knew - playing a mix of rock and gospel. Sure, why not? So we formed that little group. A strange thing happened. We were catching on. Churches allowed us to play in their fellowship halls (not the sanctuary, that would have been blasphemy), and we got invited to many youth functions. During one of these functions, a lady asked us if we would be willing to travel to another town. She thought we were pretty good, and if we wanted her to do it, she could arrange for us to play at the high school auditorium in Bellevue, to the southeast of our hometown, Wichita Falls. She would take care of the promotion, the ticket sales, everything. Well... sure, why not?

So we packed up our amplifiers and drove to Bellevue, and set up on the small stage there. On the other side of the curtain was a packed auditorium, probably holding a couple of hundred people. One thing was odd, though - I was expecting to see high school kids, and most of these people were adults. Well, not to worry, they were probably family types.

We opened with the song I had written, because it established so well that we were playing Christian rock. I played bass on that one, because the song depended on a heavy rock line, and I had written it. Only fair.

By the time we finished the song, the auditorium was empty. Well, not empty, there were four or five kids in the front row screaming for more. They were the only ones that hadn't been accompanied by their parents. The other kids had been dragged indignantly from the place by their gospel music loving parents. The promotion had been done, yes, but the posters had all said "gospel music" - the nice lady hadn't known what else to call what it was that we did.

That made twice we had been walked out on by gospel music fans.

After that, I had the blessing and privilege to find a small church that was actually into praise and worship, without all the nonsense. A group formed, named Peniel, and I found myself playing my Gibson SG-I, and we actually played Christian music without caring at all if we ever became popular or successful - we just sang and played and worshiped and it was the best time of my life.

Many of us were Air Force, and so what with transfers and such we parted ways. Many of us are still in touch via the internet, and we are still close friends. No, not just friends, brothers.

I began to lose interest in playing the guitar, and I sold the SG-I, or rather traded it in on a new acoustic guitar that was just coming into use: the Ovation. I still have it (model 1111-4). It's a little harder to play than the SG, because the first fret is kind of hard to get all the way down, as is the case with most acoustics, so an F chord is a bear. And a chord that requires more than three frets is impossible for me - I broke a finger at Amsco steel when I was helping to change a die on the brake press, and it never healed right. So my third finger is so weak that I have to use my fourth finger to make a "down" chord, the sort of bar chorded A. That works OK until I need an A7 or the equivalent, and then I'm in trouble.

And anyway, I'm way way out of practice. I barely remember how to play now.

So up the highway from us is this place that sells guitars and gives lessons. And I'm thinking about trading in my Ovation, which has increased in value and is in near-mint condition, for a new electric guitar and small amplifier. I have heard that they make guitars in 3/4 scale, so I could reach that third fret without stretching too hard. And at least one Ovation of that model has sold for $3000... though it may have been a special edition or something. I find it hard to believe that my little $250 guitar from 1974 could be that prized. On the other hand, if you adjust for inflation... who knows?

That and... and... taking lessons. Actual lessons. I never took lessons in my life. For all I know, I learned it all wrong. And I have the time to practice now, being retired and old and useless.

What should I do?

toast

I made toast this morning and there was a longhorn image burned onto the toast.
It's a miracle.
I shall now put it on eBay and sell it for a thousand dollars.

Random discoveries

1) After watching our Woodstock DVD last night, I was reminded of the incredibly ignorant words coming from the stage microphones between sets. The stupidest was when somebody was pointing out the army helicopters which were landing nearby to deploy a medical team to care for those among the half million attending who had gotten sick, or overdosed, or injured somehow. "They're with us this time, man, they're with us!" As if the United States Army had ever been against them. Sure, some officers were likely to make snide comments about hippies in those days, but nobody in an army helicopter would have been deployed against American citizens just because of hair style or choice of music.
There were other stupid comments about how well this was all working - and it is true that it was amazing that that many people could sit together for three days without anyone attacking another or committing violent crimes. But it was also true that the only reason they had water to drink or food to eat was that emergency services were coming to their rescue, bringing food and help in response to what was, in truth, a disaster area.
I was also astounded by the utter lack of talent or skill on the part of Canned Heat. Listen to that guitar solo, and compare it to performances by Ten Years After, The Who, Jimi Hendrix or Carlos Santana. It's like comparing a little kid playing chopsticks on the piano to the guy in Legend of 1900.
Tickets were $18 in advance for all three days, which is $75 in today's money.
They told the local authorities they expected no more than 50,000 people attending the event.
There were two deaths during the festival: one was a heroin overdose, the other was a guy in a sleeping bag who got run over by a tractor.
Also, the bass player for Jefferson Airplane was one ugly dude.

2) Pringles' Onion Blossom Chips are awesome, assuming you like Onion Blossoms or their many imitators. They taste so much like the onion blossoms that you have to eat a couple, maybe three, before you can get past the shock.

3) Many people who you think are for Obama are not. Many who still are, are going to be very very disappointed in the next four years. He isn't going to be as good as they expect, because he can't really do the things they think he promised to do. And he isn't going to be quite as bad as his detractors expect - unless he turns out to really be the anti-christ, in which case he will be worse instead. This was an election year, and hyperbole was at its usual level for such a time. But you never know.

Hammer and Sickle

That's the communist flag being waved in celebration of our president-elect, there.

Fear debt and more

None of these money principles are really new with me, and you have likely heard them before, but these are the ones that I have personally found to be very good advice, and practical for the average bear. Your mileage may vary.

1) Fear debt. It is a vicious killer, and can become your master in less time than you would believe. It's a mathematical thing.

There are only two things that you can justify buying on credit: your house or your car. You can justify buying the house on credit because everybody has to have one, you'd be paying rent if you didn't, and in truth, it's sort of a savings account / retirement plan anyway. At the end of 30 years (or 15 if you're good and can manage it), you have a house that will make it possible to retire.

You can justify the car because you really need it to be able to hold a job, which also is necessary. If you live in a place that offers mass transit, this doesn't apply. But if you live in Albuquerque, which requires a car for survival, you're going to either buy a car or walk.
Most people are math challenged, and don't realize the actual effect of paying interest, or the wonder that is compounding. If you make the entries on a spreadsheet, though, you can see it as it happens. But let's oversimplify just to make it easy. When you buy a $1,000 item on credit for a year, at 18%, you're paying 1180.00 for that item, and you're paying an extra 180 bucks for the privilege of not having to wait for it. But if you save up for it, and earn only 4% on the money while you save, you only pay $960 for it, as if it were on sale. The difference between buying now and buying later is $230! (It's actually much much more, because the interest compounds, but that takes a spreadsheet to demonstrate.)

And it gets worse. When you do it with a credit card (notice that you can't buy a car or house with a credit card), the terms encourage you to not pay off the balance. The debt grows and grows until you are only able to pay the interest. Now you're screwed, because you have to pay money to the bank, and you get nothing for it. Zilch. To get out of this mess, you have to pay back that debt with large portions of your income. And it isn't easy.

Most people learn this the hard way, and if they're lucky they get to start over with an even balance by the time they reach 40 years of age.

So the folks who save their money get a mathematical advantage over those who buy on credit, without even having to work any harder or earn more money.

Once you master the principle of staying out of debt, there are some neat things you can do with a credit card - but if you can't pay off the balance every single time, with room to spare, don't even try them. I won't list them here. I will only tell you that they involve taking advantage of the enticements that the banks offer you, hoping to get you into their lair, but you fool them by paying off the balance each month - wicked, false, trickly hobbitses!


2) Learn the difference between cheap and thrifty.

You can actually lose money by being cheap. OK, sometimes you can't help it; you have to have a car, and so you buy a junker, because it's the best you can do. But if you can afford to buy a car that is dependable, you should do it.

Here's thrifty: you can go to Kroger's and buy the store brand of many items for a third less than the famous, advertised brand. Why not do it? Now, if you get home, and it really isn't as good (sometimes the case), then go back to the famous brand. Here are some things I no longer buy with the official label anymore, because the Kroger's brand is just as good: Miracle Whip, sandwich sliced ham, sour cream, butter (whipped or otherwise), most canned goods including corn, beets, vinegar, Campbell's soups... the list goes on. Some things, though are best done by the experts, such as canned spinach, Wolf brand chili, and Dr Pepper.

Let's assume you have some money available, and you're going to buy... say, a new TV. How much do you watch TV? If you watch it every evening, and it's your main entertainment, then prorate it. The TV will likely last ten years, but at least five. That's a lot of TV watching, so you should be willing to spend a little more and get a good one in the first place. The same goes for that washer and dryer, the refrigerator, your shoes - you should plan on using them for many hours, and so you shouldn't go cheap. Obviously, you don't need to pay for status symbols - buy quality, buy what you will use. Find the best value.

Incidentally, don't be afraid to bargain, especially when buying an expensive item. When we bought our washer and dryer, we got them to knock off a couple hundred bucks on the deal. If you're embarrassed, try this technique. You go in and ask to see the very cheapest thing they have. Look at it, consider it. Ask about it. Go look at the more expensive things, too, and ask about them. Then go back and look at the cheap stuff again. The salesman and his manager will want you to buy the more expensive one, of course, so as soon as he starts explaining the advantages of the better item, ask him if he would consider sweetening the deal if you were to buy the better item. Often, he will go talk to the manager and come back with an incentive. Honest, it can happen.

3) When you buy a house, seriously consider a 15 year mortgage rather than a 30 year mortgage. Not only will you save 15 years worth of interest, the bank will usually offer a much lower rate, perhaps as much as 2 percentage points. If you can't afford the payments on a 15 year mortgage, you are likely buying too much house.

4) Marry somebody who understands this. If you are considering marriage, discuss the principles of debt and thrift. If he or she doesn't immediately and enthusiastically agree with you that debt is of the devil, slow down the romance. Otherwise, you will have to follow the path to near bankruptcy, then climb slowly and painfully out of the pit of financial darkness, all so that your new spouse will learn the hard way what I just explained in this short little blog.

Yelllow roses and gardens

You may remember the two rose bushes from my hurricane video.


Photo by wm. Hurricane by Ma Nature.

Yesterday, both bushes had grown new leaves and were producing some roses. The yellow roses, however, were numerous and beautiful. GA decided that there were enough that we could take a couple indoors for the kitchen table:


photo by wm, roses by God

I think these are virtually perfect. And what better symbol of Texas than the yellow rose?

We had a tiny yellow rose bush back in Midland, which the new owners have probably killed by now, converting everything to the popular"plain yard" motif. But it was tiny by comparison, and I suppose may have been a miniature variety. I don't know about such things. All I know about roses I learned from Aunt Wynona, namely to cut the roses at a point just above a junction with five leaves. For whatever reason, that practice will result in more blooms. See, she's a flower gardener, while I specialize in veggies.

Monday, I'm going to put in a new garden. I bought some new border bricks at Home Depot, because when I do a garden, it has to double as landscaping, and looks have to take precedence over the practical. Still, I will not have a rectangular plotted, straight rowed conventional garden. It has to be a work of... art.

The current garden still has tomatoes, garlic, cilantro and black eyed peas, all crowded together like a bunch of New Yorkers. The cilantro is just about ready to pick and toss into a salad.

I hate rebate programs

I hate rebate programs. I hate them for three reasons.

The first reason: when you buy the product, you pay taxes on the entire price, including what you're going to get on the rebate. For example, if you get a rebate of $20 on a $100 product, you pay sales tax on the entire $100, even though you're really only paying $80 for the product.

The second reason: you have to fill out a stupid form, mail it to somebody, and hope it doesn't get lost in the mail. Or get lost in the mail room after it's delivered. Then you have to wait to get your check, hoping it doesn't get lost in the mail, and then you have to go cash it.

The third reason: it's possible to lose the receipt, or lose the rebate form, or even to simply forget to apply for the rebate. (That's likely what the company is hoping for).

It would be simpler for everybody to just take the rebate form at the store, like a coupon, and reduce the price you pay - so you don't forget to apply for it, so you don't pay sales tax on the rebated amount, and so you don't even have to use a stamp and an envelope to ask for the money they promised you.

But do they go for the simpler method? No, of course not. And AT&T found a way to make it even more complicated, more expensive, and even more likely that you'll lose the money in the process. Notice that AT&T has an actual contract with you when you have your rebate coming. They know they're going to be billing you every month, using a numbered account. That means they could simply apply your rebate to your account, and save everybody (including themselves) a lot of time and work. But do they do that? No.

They sell you your phone, charge you the full sales tax, promise you a rebate, and then instead of sending you a simple, easy to cash check in the mail, they send you a debit card. A debit card!

So they go to the trouble and expense of establishing and manufacturing a debit card, with a unique number, tied to an accounting system, which you get in the mail just like the check, and then you have to call a toll free number (probably using your cell phone and costing you minutes) and waste five or ten minutes navigating through a sea of menus, so you can activate it. And your trouble is just beginning.

Say it's for $100. Now you have to keep a log of how much you've spent on it, unless you can find a place where you can spend exactly $100. The instructions say to calculate the difference between your purchase and the amount on the card, pay the balance first, then run the card through, while the clerk is frowning at you, along with the twenty people in line behind you, waiting. I tried it at the grocery store. Neither of us could figure out how to make it work. Neither could the next five people in line, as they frowned impatiently.

You can't use it at the gas pump, at least not pay at the pump. You have to give it to the clerk. But even though it says it's a debit card, you have to instruct the guy in the gas station to run it as a credit purchase, again with a line of people waiting behind you.

So I try the card again, at the grocery store. It says Not Authorized. I go home and call AT&T. They tell me that according to their records, that day I tried to use it at the grocery store? And we couldn't make it work? Well, the next day the grocery store took the money somehow. My card is empty. Now I have to take it up with them.

Remember, all this instead of simply applying $100 to my cell phone bill, as a credit - saving the cost of the card and all this hassle.

I hate rebate programs. And I especially hate rebate programs that involve a stupid, orange debit card instead of a nice, paper check.

Nature's 5.1 surround sound

It's raining today.
The bad news is that I don't get to go for my walk. So I can't eat candy, or at least I can't eat as much candy.

Not that I just stuff myself with such things, but if you don't burn the calories, you have to limit the intake more. Besides, I eat the sugar free Reese's cups, and low-carb Dove dark chocolate and raspberry things. The Dove things, by the way, are sweetened with sugar alcohols, which means you can't go nuts with them either, unless you need a laxative effect. If you do need a laxative some day , forget the drug store - buy a bag of these babies and go to town.

But I digress. It is raining today, and we're getting thunder with it. Down here in Houston you usually get just rain, with no thunder. Back in Wichita Falls or in Midland, you could usually count on some nice loud thunder for a soundtrack with your rain storm. In Wichita Falls, you could also count on some nice loud tornadoes too, but that's another story.



The 1979 tornado in Wichita Falls, TX

I remember a time when GA and I were hiking in the Smoky Mountains National Park, and when we were lying in our little tent, there was a thunderstorm crossing overhead. It was a wonderful experience - the sound would echo across the sky and reverberate. We just lay there enjoying the sounds for a while before we fell asleep.

I heard from the insurance company about our damage claim on the fence in our backyard. Our deductible is about $2000 so I'm supposed to find a fence company and get an estimate. If they can fix it for less, I won't file a claim, but if it's more I can file the claim. I have no idea what it will cost. If I were the hulk, I could just push it back into place and tamp the dirt down.


The Hulk, about to push my fence back where it belongs

But I'm not the Hulk, I'm more of a Captain Sloth.

And the sun just came out. If the sky turns blue, I will need to go run an errand or two.
Instead of blogging with no real point to make.

The bailout, comrades, welcome the bailout

Here's the way I see this bailout mess.
Years ago, the government passed legislation encouraging the banks to lend to the poor (rather than "discriminate" against them). The message was that just because somebody is a poor credit risk is no reason to deny them a loan. The lenders jumped right on that, because there is huge money to be made, provided that the government is willing to cover your losses. So they whipped out these balloon mortgages, knowing full well that these buyers were never going to be able to pay those higher payments when the balloon arrives. (A balloon mortgage offers lower interest rates now, but higher ones later on in the payback). The bankers told the buyers that the value of their property would increase by the time the balloon arrives, and so they could easily refinance with a better interest rate. Only that didn't happen, which means that the default rate went through the roof, and the bankers started losing big time. Now remember, they were making it big time before the balloons landed.
It's as if you or I went to Las Vegas to gamble, and if we win, we keep the money, but when we lose, the government covers our losses.
In fact, this has been referred to many times as "privatizing the profit while socializing the debt." This is about as succinct and accurate as you can get.
Those fat bankers are keeping the profits they made when they loaned all that money for balloon mortgages, and making us cover their 'losses' now that the tide has turned. In a free economy, they would be allowed to fail, and more capable, responsible lenders would arise to take their place. There is nothing "free market" about this deal at all. Yet, economics professors are now announcing that this proves that the free market won't work, that the economy must be controlled. What a fraud. An honest analysis would show that government intervention has failed.

Electric plug for an old vacuum cleaner

We have this old antique vacuum cleaner - a Kirby from the 50's, made of some kind of metal, maybe aluminum, maybe cast iron. No, it's not rusting, and it doesn't weigh much, so it must be aluminum. Or steel. Or gray plastic cleverly made to look like aluminum.

This immortal workhorse of a machine has been efficiently vacuuming our floors for the 25 years we've been married, and for another 25 or 30 or more years before that.

It finally began having problems. It has those old fashioned two prong plugs that you shove into the electric socket, and when plugged in, it would only work if you jiggled the plug just right. My son-in-law showed me that each of the prongs is not really a single blade, but a sort of loop that allows it to make contact and yet compress if the slot is too tight. So he expanded the loop with a screwdriver, and it worked again - for a while.

But apparently, the metal - I guess it's copper or brass or gold - has grown soft in its old age, as have I, and the loops collapse almost instantly. It was time to replace the plug.

I didn't really want to do that. This old vacuum is an antique, and I hated to spoil its authenticity by replacing original equipment with a modern add-on. But if it was going to suck again, it had to be done. So I was off to Home Depot.

There I saw a range of replacement plugs, but none of them were the kind I remembered from my younger days. You remember, you just slipped off the little cardboard cover and loosened the screws and attached the wires, or "conductors" as the English say. I picked out one that had two screws you took out and you just shoved in the wires, or conductors.

I hated the moment, but I had to do the surgery: I severed the old plug from the 15 mile cord extending from the vacuum's handle. I had done the research - I knew that the white wire is neutral, and attaches to the wider of the two blades. I even confirmed this with my son-in-law via my cell phone. I was... ready.

I put the wire - excuse me, conductor - into the slot and turned the screw. The manufacturer's website assured me that that's all you have to do for a tight and easy installation. But as I screwed it in, I screwed it up. The parts inside the plastic twisted into a mess, and the plastic was pushed out of its place, and the wire fell out like promises at election time.

I unscrewed the screws, and tried again. Same thing. I thought maybe I had the wrong holes. There were several, after all, and I searched the website for maybe some little graphic of the wires going into this device. No luck. It was apparently so easy and so self-evident that I could not possibly mess this up. Yet I had.

This is the sort of thing that happens to me every time I try to do plumbing, or electric repair, or car repair. This is why I depend on friends who can do any of those three things. I am pretty good at finding the problem with a computer, and back in the day I could trouble shoot database programs with the best of them. But pipes, cars and electric plugs hate me, and live for the moment they can entice me into a repair job. They are essentially evil. I should have been a Luddite.

Today I will go back to Home Depot or Walmart or whatever is out there, and I will find one of those old fashioned plugs that you just loosen the screw, wrap a half loop of wire around it, and tighten. Anything more complicated is a communist plot.

And that's the shocking truth.

Death has been outsourced

"Hello, Death dept.? I just died. Where is my escort?"
"Thank you for calling Death tech support. We're currently experiencing some technical difficulties. Please wait for our next available technician."

[bad choir music plays during 59 minute wait]

"Tank choo sur for wetting. How meh aye hep joo?"
"I just died about an hour ago. I thought this sort of thing was supposed to be efficiently handled. I thought I was supposed to be escorted into the afterlife - who's handling this, some government agency in Mexico?"
"Oh no sur, we doo dis hir in India now."
"Oh, fine. Is this going to be worse than Sprint's tech support?"
"ob curse nott. Notting iss dot bat. Now... witch apterlipe plan did you suscripe too?
"We were supposed to choose one? I thought that just... you know... sort of happened. One size fits all."
"Ah. Nondenominachunal."
"Whatever. So what happens now?"
"I im afrait thir will be som technical difficults. We hat sum proplims with marketing lettly."
"Proplims? What kind of proplims?"
"Well - sum itiot hass bin promissink 72 virgins to sooside bompers. Virgins??? In Hell? Virchins are hart to come buy, I im tellink yoo, espetchally in hell."
"I can believe that."
"But the real proplim is that the reincarnachum sopware in India keeps claching with the Apterlife modules. Krichna... Buddha... some Arabian desert moon god... wee gott pipples expecting to bee reporn as cows and we have them poppink out in hell."
"Wow."
"It smells goot, tho. I im not allowed to like steak sizzling, but it duss smell goot."
"Cows in hell. I guess that would smell good."
"Don't tell my soopervisor."
"I won't. So what do I do now?"
"Um... take out da battry and lett joo fone sit por minnit. Den, put it back in."
"But I can't talk to you if I do that! What if it doesn't work?"
"Oh, it won't wurk at all. But by the time you call beck, mebbe we haf promlim fix."
"Oh, my god. Sprint is in charge of Death."
"No, no no. But we doo haff a hole wing in hell named for them. Beddy spetchul place, jess."

[line goes dead]

"Hello? Hello?"

America's Got Talent this year

I was sort of a newbie with America's Got Talent this year - I only watched it for moments last season because GA made me, so I could see Terry Fator, and I had to admit the guy is the best at what he does, ever.

But this year I watched almost all of it, though I missed the first episode. I mostly watched because I realized that they were featuring some really bad "talent," which I noticed all had one thing in common: when asked why they thought they could win, they said that their friends had told them they were great. The ones who were actually good would say something else, and always had some doubts about their own abilities. (Maybe they also had honest friends). I'm thinking that it could be those doubts that motivate them to try harder and get better at what they do.

After the first elimination rounds, we were left with only the good ones. Not the great ones, mind you - "great' would not include acts like the Zooperstars, a ridiculous group of people in giant animal costumes, stumbling around like morons on the stage. It would not include the female impersonator whose talent was that he looked sort of like Britney Spears and lip-synced her music. These people would at the very least draw a crowd at a supermarket, though whether people would pay admission to see them is another question.

Later in the season I began to see people eliminated whom I really liked. I'm talking about Jessica Price, Paul Salos, the Wright Kids.

Paul Salos is a Frank Sinatra impersonator, and he is incredible. if you close your eyes, you could really believe it's old Blue Eyes himself, right down to the voice, the attitude, the inflection. This guy has a career if he wants one - if not in Vegas, somewhere else. The Wright Kids belong in Branson - they can do wonders with anything from 60's pop music to blue grass.

And I was actually considering Jessica Price (above) as my third favorite - but as GA pointed out, while she is talented she is not unique, and not really even different than another fifty female country singers, though she is better looking than most of them. Still I like her, and I sort of wish I could adopt her so she could have a decent father - apparently, the scumbag abandoned the family, though Jessica still adores him. That's love for you.

So the top five are on tonight, and the voting is over, and we should get to see the winner tonight.
That means I get to express my opinions about them for all the world to see, because this is America, and because I have a blogger account. Here they are, in no particular order.

First up, Eli Mattson:



Eli is a talented pianist and songwriter, who idolizes Elton John, and by sheer coincidence, imitates his style. He only did one song of his own writing during the competition, so far anyway, and that turned out well. He sings almost as well as Elton, but the amazing thing about him is his piano-playing skill. The man is awesome. He could win, but that could be said of anyone in the top five. If he doesn't win, he will almost certainly have a well-deserved recording contract.


Nuttin But Stringz


Here is GA's favorite, and her pick to win. She could be right - if you judge by uniqueness, if that's a word, these guys are almost the definition of the word. Nuttin But Stringz fuses hip hop, classical and rock, and does it so well that it's almost a new genre in itself. These gentlemen play those instruments with skill, flair, and energy. They could easily sustain a two hour Vegas show, and fill the seats every night.



Donald Braswell almost wasn't even in the finals.

The judges tossed him out earlier in the rounds, but another act had an untimely accident, and her spot had to be filled, so they let America vote on who to reinstate. This is the man who had a vocal cord accident years ago, and overcame it to sing again. Personally, I think he is the weakest of the five finalists, but he nevertheless ought to be on Broadway, or wherever they put people with this kind of voice, because being the weakest of these five is not weak at all.



Queen Emily



This beautiful woman is my 2nd choice for winner. She stands there so quietly, with poise and aplomb and humility, but when they cue her, she turns into the most dynamic singer you can imagine. I'll probably get in trouble for this, but she's my new Queen of Soul, with all due respect to Aretha Franklin - assuming you remember her.

Some day she will do a tribute album, with all Aretha covers. I will buy it. Queen Emily could easily fill a Vegas theater, whether she wins or not.


Neal E. Boyd

And here is my personal favorite.


This guy can sing opera as well as anyone. OK, I have to issue the disclaimer: I don't actually even like opera. But that's what makes this guy special - if he isn't phenomenal, then why do I, an opera ignorer, absolutely love him? I could watch this guy sing for hours. They made him do some non-opera too, just to prove he could, and he was great there too - but it's opera that lets him shine, where you see his passion come through. He may not win, in fact I will be surprised if he does - and I don't know if he can fill a Vegas theatre night after night. But if he isn't touring the world with two other tenors I could name by this time next year, there is no justice.

Who do I think will win the competition? If I had to bet, I would sneak out of the casino. I don't think Donald Braswell will win, but of the other four, only the producers can really say at this point.

Hot bumper sticker

I love this little bumper sticker. If I still put stickers on my bumper, I'd buy one.
We sure enjoyed the week or so of cooler weather there, when the north wind gave us lower humidity and temperatures.

How's that for a short blog post?

Hurricane Ike Video

Ike, take a hike!

So here's the tale, for those who are interested.

After the power went off Friday, and I phoned in an update to Dave so he could post it as a comment to the blog, the house started warming up, as it tends to do in Houston when you don't have AC. So we went outside, and there were several neighbors standing outside on our driveway. They were there because our house happened to be a sort of midway point between their houses.

So next thing we all knew, we had brought chairs to our driveway and started bringing cold ones of various kinds and sat around talking about hurricanes and other exciting stuff. Might as well, nobody had power, and it was getting really warm indoors.



photo by Wm

We sat around getting to know each other, which was a new thing, because until then, most of us were only on a "how's it going" basis. People kept bring out more cold beverages, knowing full well that we weren't about to keep them cold for long. I think we stayed out until about 10:30, when it began lightly raining again. The wind wasn't too bad - unless you got out of your chair, in which case it tried to blow away.

We knew that Ike wasn't going to arrive until one or so in the morning, so we "hunkered down" as our local officials had advised our area to do. (They discouraged us from evacuating because the roads were full of people who needed to get out by that time).

It was hard to get to sleep because it was so hot. We got some breeze from the south-facing window, and it was good, but it was still stifling. It started blowing hard at 2:00 am, sustained winds of 65 mph, with gusts to 90. But the hurricane force winds got here about 3:30 or 4:00, and lasted until about 6:00. We weren't in the eye. At the worst of the storm, our wind was directly from the north, and it was shooting rain into our doorknob's lock slot and water was streaming out the doorknob on the inside. There was a constant howling sound under the rising and falling noise of the rain hitting the walls. We left windows on the downwind side open so we could get some more cool air, but it was still hot. If you ever wondered, a hurricane doesn't cool you down like a normal thunderstorm.

Next morning, after the winds left, I went outside in the gently falling rain to see what damage we had. Our fence was still standing, but the length to the east of the gate had been moved about ten inches or so out of the yard. The posts, instead of breaking off, had simply plowed a trough into the ground and moved out of the yard! Our neighborhood got off easy, thanks be to God. Virtually all the trees were young, and so they leaned at a 45º angle to the ground instead of breaking off and flying away. Several of our new friends and I went to each tree, pushed them back to more or less upright, and pressed the soil down with our feet. No one of us could have done that, but with all our combined strength, we got all of them up except the second biggest tree in my yard. It will continue to lean, possibly as a cool reminder of the hurricane.

Some people had gone for a local tour outside of our immediate neighborhood, and said that we should go see the older areas of the Plantation. We left Poet's Corner and we could immediately see that the fence hiding the railroad tracks was down in several long stretches. There were some large, older trees by the bayou that were down, and when we got to the railroad overpass west of our house, we saw about forty people standing around with cell phones on their ears. Seems that you could go up there and try to call - some could get actual voice calls, but most of us could only text. I dubbed it "cell phone village." We went further, and toured the older areas, and there were downed trees everywhere. Most had been pulled off the road, so traffic could move. Where trees had landed on the brick fence, it was collapsed. Here are some photos of the plants around our house, and then some of the Sienna Plantation area.


This is the crepe myrtle outside our house. It was on the west wall of the house, where the wind struck us for the last half of the storm. If you look close, there are still a few leaves attached here and there.



Here's the rose bush in the back yard. There are still some blooms, but I have no idea how they managed to hang on.



Here's the little shelter they built to commemorate the old Sugar Cane plantation that our houses now occupy. The structure did very well - the downed tree is resting partly on the roof, but doesn't seem to have hurt the shelter at all.


Here's a sign leaning way down at the school. This is the way most of the trees were leaning. Some of the signs were simply sheared off at ground level. I guess it has to do with how strong the poles are.


So there we are, with all our new friends, and one couple (Bob and Priscilla) has a generator and a grill set up. So the rest of us start digging food out of our freezers, and we brought over shrimp, and chicken breasts, and briskets and fish. Bob set about barbecuing happily, and we all set up chairs on their driveway, and we feasted on food that would otherwise have ruined. More adult beverages appeared, and we made hurricanes, which is a drink involving rum and something purple in color. A great time was had by all, and we speculated on when power might be restored. We saw brilliant flashes of light in the distance, which were not lightning, but merely transformers exploding as they tried to get power restored.

We had a little transistor FM receiver as advised by the local officials who tell you how to prepare for a hurricane, but it decided to start messing up on us. Specifically, the power button stopped working. If it was on, you couldn't shut it down. So I pulled the batteries, but then it wouldn't come back on because the power button didn't work that direction either, so GA beat it up, and it came on. Anyway, we heard news that the city of Port Arthur had banned liquor sales after the hurricane. How barbaric! After a hurricane is exactly when you need booze!

Word got in that a cold front was on the way. The prediction from the weather people was that it would arrive Monday, and that Sunday would be a hot day. I began praying that it would arrive early. And it did. Sunday was nice. We slept nicely, very nicely that night, as a cool breeze blew through our bedroom.

Monday morning, we had some cell reception in the house. Not enough for phone calls, but we could text. Soon, we could actually make calls - but we didn't make too many, because we had to conserve the phone batteries.

I spent most of Monday pruning the remains of my rosebush, clearing leaves out of our landscaping, putting appropriate foods into the compost bin, and so forth. It was a lovely day today. And then GA shouted "Woo Woo!" The power had flickered on for just a second. That meant that the electricity guys were working in our area. Sure enough, by 3:30 the power came on and stayed on. For us, the worst of it was over. There are still a half million or so families without power, and some more without drinkable water, and many many still without ice, which is more of a hardship than you might think.

It will be a week or more until we can buy any meats at the stores, maybe not that long until the lines at the gas station go down to a reasonable level. It still seems a little strange to be able to just flip a switch and a light comes on. It's kind of magic.

Lessons learned:

1) Trust God in the storm, as well as after.
2) A disaster is only as fun as you make it. Make it fun if you can.
3) It really feels good to have friends and family care about you.
4) Those things they tell you to do to be prepared for hurricanes? Do them.
5) Texans come together in hard times.
6) Caving lamps work very well after a hurricane.
7) Never move to Port Arthur.

ps. You may have seen something on the Drudge report about a woman in Galveston complaining that there ain't no FEMA coming there and they don't care about nobody. That woman is way out of line. They tried to get everybody to evacuate Galveston island up until the water was too deep to get them out. That woman is also not typical of Texan attitude. Most of us either evacuated, or we've been darn patient while people work hard to get things back to normal.

I figger she's not a Texan. She's probably from Louisiana.

We're back!

Yes, we're back. The lights came on again at 3:30, and we even have internet. That's three hours short of three days without power - which makes us very blessed. There are still over 2 million people in this area with no power, and some have no water. FEMA is trying to distribute what people need, which is a herculean task. A very few are complaining that not enough is being done, but the New Orleans attitude is in the minority. Most are good Texans, who understand that a disaster is only as much fun as you decide to make it.

I am in the middle of cleaning out the spoiled crap in the refrigerator and freezer, so I am kind of busy, but I wanted to let you all know that we are OK, really OK now, with electricity (how did people survive this climate without electricity???), potable water, and soon... soon... ICE! And I will be able to recharge the cell phone, so if you want to call, go ahead - just be aware that you may not get through.

Thank you, God, and thank you electric system repair guys.

More will follow. I think in a little while I will read all the comments that got left over the last three days...

Riding the Storm Out

---1115, 9/12/2008---
The water is now above the street level in Texas City. They have an info-babe standing ankle deep on the highway, and the water is over the curb, and rising quickly. Yes, this is mainland, Texas, not the island.

Still no rain in Sienna Plantation.

---1145---
The 311 service is no longer in effect in the evacuation zones. If you're in those zones, you can no longer get help leaving. You're on your own.
30 mph wind gusts are reported in the Sugar Land area. That's us. So it begins, but the real ugly stuff is still hours away.

---1305---
We are expecting a 20 ft. surge in the ship channel (that's a correction. Sorry). The actual hurricane eye will come ashore about midnight - 11 hours from now. That means about 1 in the morning it will pass over us, which means I can't take pictures, even if we get the eye. Darn.

The first rain in our area should begin pretty soon. We just went outside and cut flowers from our rose bushes and other flowering plants. We might as well enjoy them indoors, they'd be gone soon anyway.


---1315---
The rain has begun here. The fun begins.
By the way, the distance from the eye and Galveston is, at this moment, the same as the distance between Wichita Falls and Lubbock.

---1343---
Now we're getting rain, then sun, then rain. That's those bands you can see flying away from the hurricane if you're watching it on TV. They've seen 36 ft. waves out at sea near the eye of the storm. Mr. Elemental Energy Guy might not understand that, but most of us can realize that we're talking about 12 yards, more than a first down in football terms, only it's a wall of water that far above your head.

Here are the probables for our own neck of the woods: 10 to 15 inches of rain. Probable 65 mph sustained winds, with gusts to 100, for 12 hours. To imagine that, remember sticking your arm out the window while driving on the interstate. Remember how hard it is to see anything going by as you look at the shoulder of the pavement. Now... have you ever driven at 100 mph? (ahem, er, I would never do that, ahem, er, um). Remember how the bugs splat on the glass so spectacularly? Anyway, that's moving fast.

Getting dark again, here comes more rain.
Ike to Galveston is now only 168 miles and closing.

---1350---
They've narrowed the scope of probable landfall to between Sargent and Galveston. If you take the centerpoint of that range, and assume that Ike goes right to it, in the middle... and draw a line inland... um... that would mean the eye would go just about over us. I'm not sure what kind of pictures I could take of such an event at one in the morning, but it would sure be an experience I would never forget.

But the official track still shows it going east of us, which in terms of property damage and all that is a better scenario.

---1520---
Our sustained winds are now 23 mph, gusts to 25. Nothing really scary yet, then. Our main fascination right now is Galveston Island, where they still have some officials in the upper floors (for now) of the convention center, which is theoretically hurricane proof. Wink wink, nudge, nudge. The thing to understand about this is that the sea wall is already underwater, and the hurricane is still 150 miles out!

We've already been told that there will be no mail service tomorrow, which means they care about their employees here a lot more than they did in Wichita Falls when we had our mile wide tornado in 1979, where I wasn't allowed to go home until we finished the mail, even though I knew that my home was gone and the fate of my family was unknown. (More likely they're worried about the postal jeeps getting damaged).

The air is starting to feel a little funny, beyond just the humidity. It probably has to do with the barometric pressure, but I don't know nuthin bout no barometric pressure.

---update, 1535---
Soon all emergency staff in Galveston will be called in, and as of 9:00 tonight they will no longer answer calls for help of any kind. Three hours later, they will hear from Elemental Energy Guy, when the hurricane actually arrives there.

The first tropical force winds have arrived in San Leon (mainland), so we should have them in an hour or so (4:30?).

---1550---
Ike is now 183 miles away from our little home, sweet home. Surfside, which is already flooded due to the surge, is reporting that there are refrigerators, dumpsters and other debris floating in the water. This is the kind of local color they won't give you on the Weather Channel.

---1600---
A guy on Twitter says the seawall in Port Arthur is almost under water.

---1620---
Remember San Leon? In 20 minutes, it went from dry roads to being too flooded for cars to get through. Only those high tower pickups are making it through, plus a guy on a bicycle with his tires half under water. And it's just the surge - no serious rain there, yet.

Still no tropical winds here in the Plantation.

A guy on Twitter notes that there is a giant crane towering over downtown Houston. I guess there's nothing they can do about it - it's assembled on top of a construction site. But there could be a nasty consequence, I'm thinking.

---1655---
We're starting to get semi-serious gusts of wind. The trees on the other side of the levee, visible from our kitchen door, are doing some real swaying, and making a constant swoosh sound. We are now told that they will have hurricane force winds in Galveston by 6:30. They're announcing curfews for most towns around here, so I assume we in the Plantation are included. As if I were going to get out in a hurricane to go buy a burger. I don't know if the curfew applies to Elemental Energy Guy™ awaiting his death on Galveston Island.

They're saying all cars in Harris county need to be off the road by 6:30, presumably to give them a bit of headroom for avoiding the hurricane winds that will hit Houston shortly after. I still haven't figured out when we start with the hurricane winds - how far in advance of the center do they go?

The eye of this thing is apparently so big (80 to 90 miles across) that we will likely be in it as it passes over, regardless of the track. What we may get is wind from the east, then the calm, and then wind from the west. I'm just guessing that, of course. But if it happens that way, the worst wind will be striking the two brick walls with the fewest windows. One can hope. If so, our neighbors will be happy that we have the two-story home sheltering them.

If we still have power at 1:00 am, or when the eye passes over, I promise to blog about it. If the sky is bright enough to take photos, I will do that.

Meanwhile, GA is asking about taking Hunkering lessons, to make sure that we properly hunker down, as requested by our local officials. I would hate to find that I had unintentionally hunkered up.

---1800, or 6:00 pm---
People in Kemah are starting to worry. They're about 15 ft above sea level, and the water is pouring in from the sea, over their little barrier. TV shows water up to the nozzle on the fire hydrants, which means 16 ft so far. As I watch the live reporting from the scene, I wonder if our Hil would like to be out there, knee deep in salt water, with a microphone in her hand, explaining why the water is so deep, and asking the locals how they feel about it.

They're losing power in Galveston as I write this. They already have uprooted palm trees lying across the road, and there are chunks of a hotel blocking the way, too. No word on when the reporters get to flee the island and go report on the rising water in downtown Kemah, instead of watching each other hang onto utility poles with one hand and a microphone with the other.

The wind is getting stronger here, though we haven't had any rain for the last hour - just wind. But it is getting noticeably stronger. And here it is: sustained winds, 29 mph, gusts to 42. Here we go, folks!

---6:15 pm---
Hurricane force winds have arrived in Galveston, though the eye is still 98 miles away. No word on Mr. EEG.

The guy next door got out his hammer, and he'll putting plywood on his windows as the wind blows. Thanks, guys, for setting the example while I could still have done something about it.



Stay tuned!

Hurricane Ike Turner

OK, this could be bad.

We won't really know until it actually gets here, but it could be bad. We've decided to stay here, mainly because none of our neighbors in Sienna Plantation are bailing out, and they probably know more about hurricanes than we do - especially since this is our very first hurricane ever. And anyway, we don't want to miss our first hurricane. I'm all about experiences.

So far, it looks like Ike is going to come ashore and tramp right through the middle of Fort Bend county, where we live. It's kind of hard to figure out exactly where it will go in relation to our home, because the scale they have to use on this is huge.

So, I decided to make use of blogging technology to keep everyone updated. The updates will, of course, cease abruptly in the case of a power outage, or a flooded study.

At the moment (2:45 pm Thursday), they expect Ike to roll ashore tomorrow afternoon. We may have some winds and outer bands or stuff before then, but they will likely be more like the usual rain storms that don't really hurt anything. By Friday night, we should have high winds and hard rain. By that, I mean that we are promised 75 mph winds - but the barometric pressure inside the eye suggests the possibility of 125 mph winds. If it gets that high, we may have windows blown in. Jeff has suggested that we put tape on the windows in an X shape, which apparently gives them more strength. Jeff has been in many hurricanes in his day.

We aren't really worried about flooding here in the Plantation, because we have a 50 ft. elevation and lots of strong levees.

The evacuation from Galveston has begun in earnest, and the roads started getting majorly clogged by people fleeing the low lying areas to our south - Pearland and the other 775 zip code areas - about an hour ago. I got back from my dental appointment as it was getting thicker. We're watching channel 2, which seems to be the most reliable and up to date, much as channel 3 was back in Wichita Falls (good old Skip McBride).

I have brought in all loose objects from the yard: gardening tools, buckets, potted plants and so forth. I need to also bring in the burglar warning from out front, even though it's stuck deep in the ground. If it does get pulled out, it will become a deadly missile indeed.

Feel free to leave comments on this blog. I think I have it set where you can, but I am going to go make sure in a moment that it allows comments by non-registered folks. I will put the updates on the actual blog area; check to see if there is a newer blog entry, but I plan to just keep updating this one.

---update, 9-11, 3:25 pm---
Galveston is already flooding in the lowest areas. Storm surge is already here. wow.

---update, 3:32 pm, or 1532---
They say now that we may be enduring hurricane force winds for 18 hours.

---update, 1615 (or 4:15)---
The "track" they keep talking about is mostly just an educated guess, though apparently very well educated. We just heard that the track (which is an average of the various computer models, aka spaghetti) has shifted slightly northward. This is bad for Houston downtown, but good for harB and GA and Wm. We are now predicted to be on the "clean"side of the storm, which means the winds will be not so bad (75 mph or less), and they will be from the north instead of from the south. Most of our southern exposure consists of windows, on both of our two stories. But the north side of the house has only ground level windows. The upper level is one massive brick wall.
So we will wait until tomorrow morning to tape the windows.
In any case, the wind and rain (outlying tropical rains) will probably begin about 0100 hours tonight, and won't become severe until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest, and probably Friday evening. We still get trash pickup tomorrow morning, so I will likely take it out to the street after sun up depending on how hard it's blowing - and bring the empty container in as soon as they dump it into their Tonka truck.

Meanwhile, the surge has arrived on Galveston Island already - this is a little surprising to the weather folks here, and probably means something, though I don't know what, exactly.

---update, 2049 (8:49 pm)---
A while ago we heard the neighbor hammering plywood over his windows. In the dark. That makes me a little nervous.
They're supposed to update the track in another hour.

---update, 9:08 pm---
The county judge here says that Saturday is going to be "ugly." I don't like the sound of that.

---update, 10:10 pm---
The new track says even further east. Still not good for Houston, but better for us. The good news: they say it could possibly come ashore as a category 2, which would be a wonderful thing. Also we won't have tropical force winds until after 7 am tomorrow, and no hurricane stuff until maybe 5 or so in the afternoon. But the bad news is that surge. It could reach a 20-25 ft. storm surge if it hits Galveston directly. And even if it misses, it could be 18 ft. That's well over the sea wall.

But the track, remember, is sort of an average. Some of the trackettes go directly over Ft. Bend county. If so, we will see the eye in our first hurricane.

---update, 10:50 pm---
Have you looked at the satellite image? This storm is huge! It fits neatly just inside the shape of the entire Gulf of Mexico. And it looks like it's going to go straight into the ship channel, which is really bad news for downtown Houston. Also, by this time, hurricane Rita had changed her direction, which is what many were hoping for this time around. It has not happened.

===update, 730, 9/12/08===
Good morning. The track is still pretty much right where it was, so that's probably going to be it. No sudden shift to the north, just rolling along on schedule, with murder in its eye. It's likely going to move right up the ship channel, flood downtown Houston without mercy, and we here in the Plantation can expect some strong winds and rain from the east, then from the north. We could see the eye sometime before it's all over (that would be a bonus), but most likely we'll see sheets of rain on our north facing windows. I really hope that we don't see sheets of rain blowing onto our living room floor.

---update, 1034---
I went on my morning walk. I figured I might as well, since the rain won't start for a while yet. The sky was sunny and blue at 8:30, cooler than usual, which is to say warm but not stifling.

An odd thing happened. The air had been perfectly still, but suddenly a strong, steady breeze came up from the north. It held for about five minutes as I continued down the path, then faded to a gentle breeze from the east. By the time I got back to my neighborhood at 9:30, I could look to the sky and sea clouds moving in a relatively fast arc, traveling from the east to the north and then to the south. These must have been the first signs of the hurricane.

I met some neighbors out talking on the sidewalk, so I joined them for a bit. One was surprised that so few people had boarded their windows. But others had the same view I did - we have no idea how to install the plywood necessary to protect anything. Do we drill holes into the bricks? The mortar? Won't that damage the mortar? Besides, I don't have a ladder long enough to reach the upper windows, I don't have a skill saw or the skill to shape it to fit, and besides, the Home Depots are out of plywood by now. Some had taken pictures of the long lines outside Home Depot and Lowe's, waiting to buy plywood if any came in. Another says if the winds get to 100 mph, he's going to go outside and lean in it for fun.

We're getting different estimates from different sources, but some say the winds will be 50-75 mph, some say 75-110. I don't think anyone really knows. Some tell me that tape on the windows will help protect them, others (including the Weather Channel™) insist that it will do no good at all. Most in my neighborhood say that the windows will generally be fine anyway, at least in our area.

We both showered and put on clean clothes, I'm doing a last load of laundry as we speak, and we have two large camp bladders full of water to drink, and when it starts raining I'm going to put the cell phone on the charger to top off the battery. Local officials are telling us if we're in the flood areas, to evacuate yesterday, but if we're not, "hunker down." That's Texan for stay put, hold tight. If the eye passes over us, I plan to get pictures and video if at all possible, but if that happens we will be in for higher winds, so who knows?

By the way, the comments you guys have left have made me feel good. You don't know how much my friends mean to me. Or maybe you do.

---1100---
Holy cow.
The local TV coverage on channel 2 just featured an interview with a guy who says he's going to stay - on Galveston, not the mainland. He says he's staying because he loves the elemental energy, and he has salt water in his soul. There's a TFM for you.

The authorities have a recommendation for such people: make sure you have an ID of some kind fastened securely to your body so they can ID you if you're recovered after the storm.

The background for the interview was the sight of the waves crashing against the seawall, splashing thirty feet into the air, and coming down in a huge foaming mass toward the camera. That's right: the 15 foot seawall in Galveston is about to be topped. When it does, soon, they will remove all the reporters and cameras, because the island will be underwater. Not just flooded, you New Age moron, underwater! The nearest land will be the coast of Texas, and all the elemental energy in the world will not enable you to swim that far. Each wave crashing into the island's pathetic little seawall has enough force to kill you if it hits you while you're treading water.

There are some brave souls who are going to ride this one out on the mainland, and they are risking their lives to do it, but staying on Galveston island when this thing actually comes over it, with a 20 ft (or higher) surge? Stay tuned as we clean the gene pool.

I think I will close this entry, and begin a new one. See the menu at the left for a link to Riding the Storm Out.

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Morning walks

My morning walks take about 80 minutes to complete. I usually see at least some birds - no idea what they're called, but they're white with long necks and legs, and they're cautious but not really timid. I have occasionally seen deer.

When the levee makes a sharp, right 90º turn, it's high above the low ground on the left. You actually look down on the houses, behind their fences. Below are trees, fairly old trees, that stand tall. One of these has branches hanging within reach of the trail. In fact, you kind of have to stay to the opposite side on the trail, or else duck your head a little. There are grape vines hanging in the branches there. I saw some clusters of little unripe grapes, and next to each tree there is one grape vine growing up the trunk and mingling with the branches and leaves. Since that's too much coincidence for even an optimist like me to assume, the HOA or the developers or some really thoughtful resident must have planted one vine by each tree a long time ago - kind of like when I planted two oak trees in my front yard last year in Midland. Only the grape vines are still there, unlike the oak trees, which are gone because some attractive, stone-hearted California girl ripped them out to make it easier to mow (but I'm not bitter).

Some day soon those grapes will ripen, and the little animals in the area will enjoy them. Maybe somebody on the trail will eat them, who knows? Maybe I'll be the one. And I started thinking this morning: who else will even notice the grapes? Just other walkers like me? I doubt that the runners, the joggers will even see them. They're going too fast, thinking about their young, active things. Only the walkers, in our old man shorts, and our old man socks, and our old man t-shirts will see them, because we're the ones limping along with our old man DNA unraveling.

That's how you age, you know. Your DNA keeps replicating itself, following its instruction set, and there are tiny errors that creep in as it does. I don't really understand the process (as if you did, either), but they describe it as being similar to the little plastic ends on your shoelaces. They keep the DNA from unraveling. But they start to wear out, and the new cells have the DNA strands a little more weak and damaged, and so you get old and inflexible, until eventually you die (but I'm not bitter) like the useless refuse you were always meant to be (no, no no - I'm not bitter, honest).

OK, strike that. I'm useful refuse. Yeah, that's better.

Meanwhile, hurricane Ike is on his way, and nobody is sure where he'll step ashore without wiping his feet. It looks like he'll hit Rockport, then move up to San Antonio, and then go rain on Wichita Falls, my old hometown. We have to have a little fun.

That visit home

When I went north to visit my old stomping grounds (and a fat auld man like meself can do some serious stomping when he takes a mind to, ye ken), I made a short visit to my old house on Brazos in Midland (Midland on the Brazos, as it were).

I was curious about whether the new owners (who incidentally promised to take over the RO unit contract and then left me stuck with the bills for four months, but I'm not bitter) had appreciated any of the things I had done there. No, they hadn't. The garden space was removed, along with all the walkways I had put down. All of them. The pond is gone. The running stream is gone. They probably ate the fish. The two baby oak trees are gone too. Just a normal, boring yard, front and back. And I could have kept the other compost bin, but at least they gave it to someone down the alley.

I'm glad I at least kept the decorative rocks - the petrified wood, and all those.

What do you expect from California imports? No appreciation for the finer things.

Well, rain on 'em. I'll grow my avocado tree here, and enjoy the occasional hurricane.

Photo by wm

The Palin scandals!

You have no doubt been reading in the various media that scandals are breaking on Sarah Palin as the waves break on the rocky shores of Atlantis. Like Atlantis, she is sinking fast, and is proving to be the worst possible choice McCain could have made for his VP. But they aren't telling you the half of it, my loyal readers.

It appears that to celebrate her election as governor of Alaska, Palin had Jewish and black babies ground into sausage for a Republican fundraiser. To obtain these babies, she had the mothers forced to become pregnant, and by the way, all their mothers had to run marathons after their water broke.

She attended a church that had its members dance naked under a full moon as a sacrament, as George Bush speeches were played on the PA system. They then sacrificed baby seals on the altar at the stroke of midnight. It appears that the video has been censored from the libraries all over Alaska, even though it had been required viewing in the public schools up until the day Palin accepted the nomination for VP.

And though she claims to have been opposed to corruption, she accepted campaign funds from the Chinese communist party. No, wait, that may have been someone else. But she has yet to deny this allegation, or prove her innocence.

She is also an unrepentant heterosexual who buried fourteen virgin librarians under the newly poured cement of the children's book section. It also appears that she refused to attend Ellen Degeneres' wedding reception.

Worse yet, it appears that she didn't floss on March 3rd of 2005.

Her campaign staff does not deny any of these allegations. They are obviously circling the wagons in sheer terror of more scandal breaking by the hour. This is the worst political nomination since Karl Marx wrote the Declaration of Independence... in the original Spanish.

Hope and Change - I hope I get to keep the change

Last night's speech at the Obamopolis was pretty much the same formula followed by both parties for the last forty years. It's tried and true, and they've learned it well and will not depart from it.

It's also meaningless. If you found yourself inspired by it, you really need to investigate this thing called reality.

In the first place, he cannot keep any of those promises. It is literally impossible at this point to either lower taxes or increase social spending. How in the name of all that is sane can we do both? The economy in this country is stretched to the breaking point. Eight years ago, I would have said "he can't do that without printing more money and saddling us with inflation." But that is already happening to finance the war in Iraq. To squeeze any more out of that sponge, we would have to go into hyperinflation, which cannot last - just ask Mexico, or any other pitiful country that has tried it. You didn't know your dollar is worth less? Bucky, it lost 14% of its value last year. Why do you think the price of groceries went up so much?

We can't raise taxes because that will trigger the rest of the recession that we've been warding off with garlic and silver crosses. I won't use the D word (depression), because that would cause widespread panic.

We can't borrow the money, because we've already borrowed about all we can from our friends in China. Yes, folks, we are in debt to our eyeballs to the only major communist nation on Earth.

And yet we're going to start paying for college educations for anyone who wants one? That's not even close to being possible. We need - or rather, our government needs - every filthy little penny it can scrounge off the Walmart parking lot, just to avoid bankruptcy. Ron Paul is not the only politician who understood this, but he is the only one willing to tell us the truth about it. The others keep assuring us that, yes, we can! Folks... we can't!

I want to be sure that you noticed the Surely we can agree part of the speech. You know, we may differ on abortion, but surely we can agree that abortions should be as few in number as possible. This is a technique that has been developed over the years, and it's absolutely necessary for this kind of speech.

You see, most of the public doesn't pay any attention to politics. They will hear only two speeches that have to do with politics, and those are the State of the Union address, and the Nominating Acceptance speeches. When a politician makes either of those speeches, he must keep his voting base comfortable with what he says, and yet somehow make every one of those politically sleepy voters hear what he wants to hear. So he must never take a bold stand in those speeches, even if his stand is already well known to those who have paid any attention at all. So he says "surely we can agree," and those folks out there hear "I agree with you about abortion, war, taxes, spending, and your mom, and anything else you care about."

So you see Obama's deception? So you'll vote Republican? Wait til you see McCain's speech. He will do the same thing when he accepts his nomination. He'll be as humble as Obama was, if not more, and he will promise tax relief, fiscal responsibility, and new programs.

It remains a mystery to me how someone can declare that he is going to lower taxes for 95% of us, and be believed, and then tell you he is going to create a truckload of new entitlements, and again be believed! I think my problem is that I continue to overestimate the intelligence of the average voter - something that Obama or McCain will never be guilty of.

Rain drops

I like rain. I like the sound of thunder, especially rolling thunder. It's like having a really good outdoor surround sound.

But I especially like rain because it's so much better for the lawn and garden than the water from my yard hose. Plus, I don't have to pay for it. Plus, it cools everything down so that my electric bill goes down for a while.

I am alone this weekend, because GA is off on a business trip to Louisiana (motto: a corrupt, yet delightfully unrefined government), so I'm here taking care of the cat. On a whim, I took the pickup out for a short drive to the nearby fruit market to buy two tomatoes and an avocado. Avocados are always good here, for some reason. Rich, smooth, creamy. And I made my entire lunch out of it - not bad for $1.89, eh?


Now, I can make an awesome guacamole, but if it's just me I like to do the simple 'cado prep. You just cut the avocado in half, remove the pit, and fill the seed cavity with lime or lemon juice. You can actually eat it out of the skin, but if you're at home, just scoop it out into a bowl. Add salt to taste, mash it up, and serve on crackers. Yum!

Now, for some time I have made it my practice to stick all avocado seeds into the ground in my garden. Sure, most of them have been irradiated to control pests, and I have no problem with that, but once in a while you get a virile young avocado seed, and it will sprout. I did this in Wichita Falls and then again in Midland, and they look kind of neat just sticking up out of the middle of the black eyed peas.



But here in Houston, I have the added hope that it doesn't freeze here every year. The plant could actually become a tree. Now that could be problematic if I get caught, because I don't think the avocado tree is on the approved list in our HOA. But I figure by the time it gets tall enough that my neighbors will even see it, it will be too late for anybody to object. Besides, each of my neighbors has a yappy dog, which is against the HOA rules, too, unless you keep them quiet, which is impossible.

So before I even mixed in the lemon juice, I took the seed out to the backyard and shoved it into a small area I had prepared with some extra sand and compost, because avocado trees like good drainage, and we have mostly clay here. It started raining within five minutes of coming back inside, and that's a Very Good Thing™ when you're sticking seeds in the ground.

And then, with the rain pouring down, and the rolling thunder playing on the Outside channel, in 5.1 DTS, I pulled out my cell phone and scrolled down the list, and called my favorite cousin Ginger, in Kentucky. I love chatting with her; she always makes me laugh, and the smile lasts for at least an hour after we hang up.

So I had my walk, I had my avocado, I had good company (electronically, and that counts), and I can still hear the rolling thunder outside. Life is good.