Dialysis R Us

I'm used to finding all manner of paper and cardboard hanging from my doorknob. It's usually somebody trying to scrounge up business, for a lawn care company, or maybe a maid service.

Today, on my way out of the house to toss one more plastic bottle into the recycle tub out at the curb before the waste management people arrived to make my world a cleaner place, I saw a new one: a slick brown cardboard advertisement hanging from the knob. This one was for home dialysis.

Is this the best way to get new customers for dialysis? Are they trying to be the first to get to me when I suffer from renal failure? Is this kind of like ambulance chasing for your kidneys?

I can just see the dad in the household, coming home from work and pulling the card from the door, reading the ad, and calling up to everyone upstairs in the TV room: "Hey! Anybody up there need any dialysis? They got a special on this week."

"Not today, dear... but put it in the coupon drawer, in case something comes up."

"OK. My pee does smell a little strong lately."

"Want me to call a doctor?"

"Naw. Doctors don't know nothin'. If my eyes turn yeller, we'll know who to call."

I love this place.

Sea World and the greedy dolphin slavemasters

So we went to San Antonio this Saturday to meet the grandkids for a day of romping in the wet attractions, and to see Shamu.



Going on a Saturday in August is NOT a good idea. While I did enjoy seeing the kiddos, Sea World made me feel less like a customer or visitor than a cash cow.

Even on the best of days, you would have to say that this is a very expensive theme park to visit, but at least you'd have a good time. But they apparently make no effort to avoid over-selling the park. We were first greeted by the kid selling the parking permits: $15 a car, which is ridiculous. But it's their park, so we had to pay it.

We had already bought our tickets online, costing over a hundred bucks for the two of us. Once in the gate, though, we found it so crowded that we could barely turn around. For my part, I was able to ride two roller coasters once each, and I saw the 4D pirate film, and I saw Shamu Rocks Texas. To accomplish the Shamu admission, we had to stand in line in the sun for an hour before they even started letting people in - otherwise we couldn't even get standing room in the back. Georganne didn't even do the roller coasters or the pirate film.

Getting lunch required a wait in line for 45 minutes! And then we had to fight to get a place to sit down and eat.

To add insult to injury, Sea World has taken a hint from Disney and started selling Fast Passes, where you pay extra and you can jump the line ahead of the other people who have already been waiting for their hour, thus making their wait even longer, and Sea World's pockets even fuller. For the record, I find the whole concept of Fast Passes unfair and obscene. After waiting all that time, and finally getting to the ride, when I'm NEXT - oh, sorry sir, these people have a Fast Pass so you'll have to wait for them.

Again, it's their park, so they can run it as they please, but it seems to me that there should be a limit on admissions to prevent overcrowding. There were at least twice as many people in that park than there should have been.

On the plus side, and I always like to be an optimist, the Killer Whales (all of which are named Shamu) are magnificent, smart animals. And the Steel Eel is one screamer of a roller coaster.

And after the day ended, and the sun went down, we had a very pleasant stay at the Holiday Inn Express nearby, which had a Shamu mural on the elevator door.

Galveston

I guess I never realized how much fun Galveston could be.

The grandkids were here for a week - with their parents, of course, which makes it even more fun - but we saw this ad for Moody Gardens, which has recently reopened after getting drowned by Hurricane Ike.

I mostly wanted to go because of the dinosaur-related stuff. See, they have these pyramids - three of them - and one is an aquarium complex, where you can go down several floors and see replicas of several coral reefs in the world. They've figured out how to reproduce the corals so we can visit living specimens in their natural environment. Well, sort of natural. It's a fake natural, but it's real coral.

Another is kind of a general scientific interest pyramid, which has what I came to see, the dinosaur stuff. They have an Imax movie I've been wanting to see for years: Dinosaurs Alive, in 3D. You better believe I enjoyed that, even if the narrator did say stupid things like "Less than 2% of dinosaur species have been discovered," which is mathematical nonsense, since we're expressing a percentage of an unknown quantity by definition. I don't care - I just love seeing realistic 3D dinosaurs trying to bite me right in front of my face.



My favorite was the third pyramid (in no particular order), the rain forest. Here, you can follow a comfortable path and see specimens of plants from rain forests of the world, including coffee trees, cocoa bean trees, and vanilla orchids. Did you know that vanilla comes from orchids? I sure didn't.


Weird flowers in the rain forest pyramid. Photo by wm

There were colorful birds, turtles and fishies in the pools of the pyramid, and I want to go again so I can wander more slowly.


Birds in Moody Gardens rain-forest pyramid. Photo by wm

After spending the day at Moody Gardens, GA thought it would be a great idea to take the Bolivar ferry off the island. It was a good idea, since the grandkids had never been on one, and as far as I know had never been on the ocean except for the beach. So we went across to Bolivar, then turned right back around and came back to Galveston. It happened to be sunset as we made the crossing, which was perfect timing.


Sunset on the Bolivar ferry. Photo by wm

setting the clock in Midland

While staying in the Holiday Inn Express in Midland TX recently, we were unable to set the clock. It had a convenient label glued to the top of the clock, explaining in exciting detail how to set the alarm - good thing, too, because it was like finding the Easter Egg on a Sony DVD. You have to hold this button down while pressing the Alarm button, and you have to hold your tongue just right.

But it doesn't do much good to set the alarm if the clock is six and a half hours off. I suppose you could offset the alarm time by that same six and a half hours, but I didn't think of that, because we had already had too many margaritas at Summer Mummers. Besides, we were still shedding popcorn all over their carpet.

Turns out the trick is to find the power button and press it. I'm not sure it was turning it on or off, but it doesn't matter - you press it and the hidden clock button starts responding (it's under the clock). As far as I could tell, nothing was really being turned on or off by pressing the power button, but it somehow affected the clock button. So, to set that button:

1. Turn the clock over.
2. Press the power button.
3. Hold down the clock button and press the hour button. If nothing happens, press the power button again.
4. Still holding the clock button down, press the minutes button until the time is correct.
5. Now you can set the alarm, by following the instructions glued to the top of the clock - if they are still there.

As for setting the radio stations, that one is beyond me.

Zen and the meaning of Facebook

I spend a lot of time on Facebook. Maybe more than I should. Maybe not.

Thing is, I don't consider it a waste of time at all. Relationships are very important to me, and living down here in Houston as I do, I am a long way from the people I care about, in Wichita Falls and in Midland, and in other places.

If and when I visit my friends in those far away lands, the thing I most like to do is to sit and listen to them talk. I don't care if they tell jokes, gossip about the theatre, complain about the theatre, rant about politics - it doesn't matter, because I just love to hear them talk. If they occasionally let me join in for a quick word or comment, so much the better. But that can't happen very often - I can only go visit just so many times in a year.

Facebook gives me a virtual social life. Yes, I'd much rather be there in person with my people, sharing guacamole, hugging them, actually hearing them, smelling their after shave or cologne. But at least online, I can see the posts they offer, one after another, and I can go away and do chores and errands and then come back and see what was said while I was gone.

As for the games... well, if I play one, and you play the same one, and we send each other a cow or a chicken or a mango tree... and if I send you a Mafia Wars getaway car and you send me a .22 pistol (which I don't really need), then the same purpose is served as if we had exchanged actual phsyical gifts - is it not? If you give me a smores maker, does it matter if I need it, does it matter what it cost, does it matter if I ever use it or not, does it matter if I already had six of them in the closet? No, the thought is literally what counts. You thought of me enough to give it to me, and the message was "I see you, I like you and I'm glad you exist," whether there was a card saying it or not. It is the same with a game on Facebook: we play it together, just as we might at a small party, just as we might if you came over to visit with a Scrabble board. Would I rather be in person with you? Of course I would! But virtual, while not to be confused with reality, is truly the next best thing to reality.

If you do or don't play the games, at least I can see what you say, and comment on it, and there is a sort of fellowship to experience. I can see the pictures you upload, and enjoy them, and remember how you look in person, and see Jena's twins holding hands in their car seats, and see Hilary snuggling with her SO, and read about Midland Lisa's mysterious Body Pump activities in Midland, and WF Lisa's family in Wichita Falls, and my favorite cousin in Kentucky when she finds the time to post. I can hear from Maria in Albuquerque, and know that she is OK this week, and I can find out I fought as Beau's or Greg's capo (whatever that is) and snagged $34 from some rival gangster. I can accept a coconut tree or a goat from Allison, whose father I used to sing for when he was a choir director at church and at MSU. I can learn when Jenn's poor bruised body is sore from Lisa's Body Pump torture session. I can learn that I don't know about some of them as much as I thought I did.

And I can let them know when my cat dies, and when I am about to go clean Carlsbad Cavern again, or when I am going to show up at Mummers on the way back through to Houston. Or I can just let them know when I am feeling a little down, and they give me a virtual attaboy to make me feel better.

Yes, the games are inane and silly. Yes, none of you are really, truly here in my little office. Yes, I wish I could be there in your presence, in reality, more often. Yes, I know that my flat panel monitor is no substitute for the sound of your voice. But limping is better than a wheelchair, fuzzy vision is better than blindness, and a virtual hug is better than no hug at all. It may be all electrons and ones and zeros moving across data lines, but it's still love because you're a real person whom I know, somewhere up in WF or over in Midland.

Facebook is right up there with cell phones. It can be annoying in the wrong context, but I sure am glad it's there when I need you to be there.

Now... who needs some zinnias?

A little family history

I got a copy of this photo while visiting my uncle in Colorado this week:

The parents in the photo are Mr. and Mrs. Smith, my great grandparents. The pretty little girl in the right side of the photo is Mamie, my maternal grandmother.

Now look again at the mom. Her name was Sally Vermillion Smith, and her brother (not in the photo) is by sheer coincidence also named Vermillion, and he lived on a ranch at the base of the Guadalupe mountains back in the day. He is one of the cowboys who saw the bat flight from the cavern looking like smoke, and made several trips to the natural entrance to watch the bats exit the cave close up.

It was he who took Abijah Long to see this phenomenon, and (according to one version of the story), Mr. Long suggested to Mr. Vermillion that there could be some profit made by mining all that guano, but Mr. Vermillion thought it was silly, and so Mr. Long filed the mining claim in his own name.

The other version is that Abijah offered to go to Carlsbad and file the claim on both of their behalf, but then filed it in his own name, thus cheating Vermillion out of his share. This is the version I had always heard, but actually the version above makes more sense to me having heard it - even though Mr. Long's book makes it obvious to anyone familiar with the cave that he never visited beyond the bat cave section until it had paved trails and lighting, contrary to his claims about exploring it - and thus exposing himself as being at least a little dishonest.

But then again, who wouldn't stretch the truth a little when something as famous as Carlsbad is concerned? And besides, the dude hired Jim White, which led to the world knowing about this wonderful cave - so in a way he has a firm place in the cave's history.

Too bad nobody remembers Vermillion's first name. Note to all: write down that oral history.

Noises, off and on and from cats

When I moved away from Wichita Falls some years ago, I thought I would never be able to do another show at Backdoor theatre again. That's my home theatre, where I learned anything I know about acting or being in a show. In 2004 I moved to Midland TX, where I learned to treasure Midland Community Theatre and the friends I made there. Now I live in the Houston area, and while I won't sell the theatres here short - they do set high standards - it's really hard to do theatre when you have to drive 45 minutes each way for rehearsals because the theatres are so far apart here.

But thanks to my best friend still trapped in the Falls, who allowed me to live in his home for a couple of months for rehearsals and performances, I was able to audition for, and have a role in, the funniest play ever written, Noises Off! (The title is supposed to have an exclamation point, you see).

I did that show twelve years ago, playing Freddy/Phillip, but the part I always wanted more than any other was Lloyd, the director, who speaks such lines as "No, Freddy, we have several minutes left before we open." This time, I got the part I wanted most. But beyond that, I was privileged to work once again with my favorite director, Gare Brundidge, and with my best friend, Dave. The downside was that I had to drive between Houston and Wichita Falls once the show went up. But then, I did some calculating, and I think I actually drove fewer miles doing that than by making the round trip for every rehearsal in Houston.

An added benefit was that Dave served as my personal trainer. When I stood on the stage for the audition, I was offering 235 pounds of mass to the gravity of this planet. I now weigh around 200 pounds, give or take a kilo here or there. Granted, when you perform in Noises Off!, you do get your exercise - I learned that twelve years ago - but most of it was improved diet and my 90+ minute walk each day.

So now I'm back home, and glad to be here, and the Houston heat and humidity is beginning to return. The real heat is actually in July and August, but June is at least warm, though not as warm as Wichita Falls.

******



Our cat, Pearl, is dying.

Some of you know about Pearl, having met her. We named her Pearl because she was born on the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and because she is sort of pearl-colored, or cream. You can see by the picture she is one pretty cat -or she was when she was younger and healthier. Age robs cats of all but their inner beauty, too, just like most people. Yes, there are exceptions.

We have been trying to deal with a thyroid tumor (some cream in the ears apparently keeps that in check), impending renal failure (which has been impending for about ten years, and which I suspect we never really had to worry about), and some inconvenient seizures (they had something for that, too), but the last week or so she has quit eating and excreting - that means pooping, for you non-medical types out there. We took her in to see if there was some blockage that could be removed, but it turns out that her lack of appetite has more to do with the fact that she has cancer. How's that for irony? We move here to work for M. D. Anderson, the cancer center, and our cat gets cancer. So now she's on steroids to improve her appetite, and to make her feel generally better, but we are now considering her to be in Home Hospice for kitties - she is dying, and we have to figure out when the right moment is to have her put down. At what point is starvation far enough along to end it all? When is her life no longer worth prolonging? If she were human, the answer would be more clear - you keep people alive as long as you can, as comfortably as you can. But with a cat? A cat who can't even tell you if it hurts? I don't want to make that choice.

We have already decided not to have any more pets. Life without a pet is going to be radically different - beyond the expenses we will be relieved of, from vet bills to food and litter, there will be the things we did or didn't do solely because we had to accommodate the cat. We don't use actual bath mats because cute little Pearl peed on them when we did. We don't use floor mats just inside the front door for the same reason. We carefully check before we open a door to make sure she doesn't get out and get eaten by an alligator. We keep three litter boxes throughout the house to make sure she doesn't have to suffer any inconvenience when she needs to empty her little kitty bladder. Until recently, we couldn't eat without saving some for the cat, especially if chicken or tuna is involved. We are agreed that life without Pearl will be better and more convenient. Yet there is still the fact that we have had that cat for over 17 years, and we expect her to jump on the bed at night time and get in the way, we expect her to follow us into the kitchen and beg for food and get underfoot, we expect her to try to kill us as we go up or down the stairs.

It's going to be a different life. But for now, we have to keep that cat as comfortable and happy as we can, because it's either that or have her put down sooner. And we want to postpone that as long as we can.