The Hermitage

Everything Is Kinda Alright

2012-01-23T22:48:00.009-06:00

Dad at Christmas

Everything is kinda all right

We gonna make it through the long night

And everything’s gonna work out all right

Long as we keep a-movin’ on

—Charlie Daniels

I should have posted about this a while back, but I’ve never been that good at keeping up with my journals, even though I keep starting them.

I chose the title of this post from the Charlie Daniels song quoted above because that is how I feel after talking to Dad on the phone this evening. It’s not great, but some times all right is all you get…or need.

The picture of Dad is from our trip to see him at Christmas. This picture and many of the recent ones bring a different song to mind.

Well, to me he’s one of the heroes of this country

So why’s he all dress up like them old men?

—Guy Clark

That’s not how he sounded when we talked. And that’s not how I feel tonight.

Dad is now almost through with his radiation therapy. Because they’re irradiating the same general area as when he had colon cancer, he can only take half of what the radiologist said he would normally do for bladder cancer. Dad seems to be tolerating the therapy very well. Today was the first time he complained of any side effects, and those are not beyond the pale of his normal range of symptoms.

So, I’m reasonably optimistic. Dad is in good spirits and has some goals set. They aren’t as long-term as he once set, but they are very reasonable for someone pushing 89. I am very pleased that one of them is to reach 90. When he accomplishes that, he can set some more. As he noted today, “You have to have goals.”

On a completely different note, Suna and I had dinner tonight with Tubaboy and his girlfriend, who has a vaguely Princess Di-ish look to her. (She is a very sweet girl from Montana.) She used Tubaboy’s kitchen to prepare an eggplant primavera. I was really surprised at how delicious it was—not that I had any doubts about her culinary capabilities; it was the eggplant part that bothered me.

After dinner, we walked around campus and visited Tubaboy’s roommate at work. On the way home, I saw a huge gray fox run across the street. Now I know why the dogs have been in an uproar the past several nights.

No, People Toast Bullets

2012-01-06T15:44:00.005-06:00

Toasters Toasting People Photo by: This Blog Rules

From the "Overheard at Work" files:

So if “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” Does that mean that “toasters don’t toast toast; toast toasts people?”

Thanksgiving at the Farm

2011-11-26T20:14:00.010-06:00

Here’s the reason we changed directions after two hours on the road. This is Dad's fun. It's also what keeps him alive. The field that burned is now one of the greenest parts of the farm. Tiny shoots, but green.

We went to see Dad for the Thanksgiving break. Full details are in the Ursula blog, so I just want to focus on how Dad is doing in this post.

We got to the farm at about 21:30—long after he had gone to bed on Wednesday night. By 09:30 on Thanksgiving morning, he was out in the fields. He took a couple of hours to rest mid day, and went back out to plow for several more hours. I estimated six hours in the tractor on Thanksgiving Day.

He worked even harder on Friday and finished his plowing on Saturday, just before the sky spit for a while but refused to settle the dust. So while he doesn’t have the stamina he did when he was a young man of say 70, he is doing great for someone who is pushing 89 and fighting cancer.

The only down news is that he seems to be trying to convoke himself that the doctor won’t be able to resume treatments on Monday. He says he may tell the doctor he doesn’t want to continue with the treatments.

On the other hand, he continues to set goals and work to see them accomplished. I’m hoping his pride and determination win out over his pessimism. To use his favorite phrase, “We’ll see.”

The Dragons Sleep

2011-11-23T08:21:00.013-06:00

Pern-inspired ASCII Dragon Photo source: Benzendream

Advice for aspiring writers:
Keep reading. Writers are readers. Writers are also people who can’t not write.
Second, follow Heinlein’s rules for getting published:
Write it.
Finish it.
Send it out.
Keep sending it out until someone sends you a check.
There are variations on that, but that’s basically what works.
—Anne McCaffrey

The dragons of Pern fly missing man formation today. I learned this morning that their creator, Anne McCaffrey, died of a stroke. She was 85.

The Ship Who Sang explores themes of humanity through human-cyborg interactions.Photo source: calibre2opds

I never met McCaffery, but she was the coolest grandmother figure an adolescent male could hope for. Her imagination took us places we could never have gone without her. Librarything credits 60 books to her pen. Each one had a lesson—maybe not the lesson my parents would have wanted, McCaffery had a strong ethical bent. I read one time that she approached each of her books with a child in mind.

She had a way of making you believe. If a severely disabled girl could control a starship, how could I not try to do whatever mundane thing was bothering me at the time? If the misfit could bond to the coolest dragon ever, maybe this misfit had something to offer. I guess that was her main lesson—believe in yourself. Believe in something.

McCaffery’s earlier works are often overlooked, but they are among her best. Some of her later titles had the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but that comes from following Heinlein’s rule. (Heinlein would also let the story devolve into random preachiness sometimes.) Even so, it was difficult to put her books down.

Somewhere, the ship continues to sing.

A Quick Update

2011-11-14T12:36:00.000-06:00

Since I don’t have a picture of Dad’s face when he got the good news, here’s one of my brother Edwin, me, and Dad. I think it was taken sometime in the mid 1800’s.

The test results came back with good news. Dad’s cancer had grown, but it was only on the surface. Given that this is a very aggressive form of cancer, the doctor said its limited growth was a very good sign that the treatments are working. He went on to say that he thinks we can beat it if we increase the testaments to every week (which is what he originally said he wanted to do but never scheduled them more often that every two to three weeks).

…Home Again Hippity Hop

2011-11-13T22:00:00.006-06:00

The first thing we did was rebuild the fence Chris knocked down while saving what he could of the hay crop. We also hung two new gates by the driveway so Dad can let the cows out to graze in the fields after harvest. Here’s the “Hippity hop” part of the title. Suna told Chris she wanted a picture of me This was the best we could do given the glare on the cab plexiglass.

Dad was feeling much better this morning, but he was still willing to listen to reason with regard to following the doctor’s orders. Instead of insisting on doing the work himself, he sent Chris and I out to hang gates and plant fence poles.

I drove the tractor while Chris did the brain work on the ground. He made sure the posts were aligned both along the fence and vertically. I would guide the front-end loader over the post and push it in the ground using the flat on the bottom of the pivot.

While planting the posts, we managed to scare up a bunny nest. I clipped one little guy’s left leg, but he seems unhurt otherwise. We took him back to the house for Dad to nurse back to health. He’s very friendly and seemingly unafraid of anything. Might be why they didn’t run from the tractor soon enough.

Later Chris found a pile of fur he thinks was their mom. She had been gone a week or so, which gives us hope that the little one we rescued and its siblings will survive OK.

By the time I had to head back to Austin, we had planted 61 posts and hung two gates. Dad was feeling “better than since before May” when he was originally diagnosed with cancer.

Home Again…

2011-11-12T23:46:00.005-06:00

Moon rise and lens flare over the farm with a little hand-held jitter

Chris and I got to the hospital this morning about five minutes after the on-call doctor made his rounds and told Dad he was good to go home again. This was after the floor nurse last night told us the on-call never released patients on the weekend, and we would have to wait for Dad’s regular doctor to return on Monday. Luckily, they didn’t get the release paperwork ready until after they served him lunch, so we weren’t in trouble for making Dad wait.

Have I mentioned that he hates hospitals. He says, “If you say in a hospital long enough, they’ll kill you.” So there is nothing that would have made him madder than having to wait on someone to get him out of there.

We got him home, and he decided he wouldn’t push the doctor’s orders again. He laid down and slept most of the afternoon. We watched Lawrence Welk, and he went to bed. So did we. It’s been a long one.

Cancer and John Deere

2011-11-11T22:17:00.006-06:00

Dad and Chris discuss farm things while we wait for Dad’s new John Deere to be delivered. This should have been our first indication of what kind of day we were in store for. The smoke the driver is pointing to was actually on the other side of Cuero—more than 20 miles away The driver carries the Slow-Moving-Vehicle placard to install on Dad’s new, larger tractor while Dad wanders over to kick the tires. Chris points out something about the tractor controls as Dad moves hay. Chris buries the last of the burning hay after the fire is contained. At lest the sunset was spectacular. Maybe it was just a new appreciation of the sunset. After a long, stressful day, Dad concedes we need to take him to the Emergency Room.

This date was supposed to be an auspicious one for weddings, movies, and other things. It certainly turned out to be eventful.

I got a call the day-before-yesterday that Dad’s cancer had returned. Chris had taken him in for some tests, and they were going to keep him over night. There was a lot of anxiety and gloom in the message. The doctor felt it safer to err on the side of pessimism. I told Suna and my boss that I would do what I needed to do to tide my work project (a conference call with Singapore and some paperwork) for a few days. Then I would head to Yorktown to hear from the doctor first-hand what was going on.

It turned out that I was at the office until after 21:00, so I didn’t head out until work-time yesterday. I got the hospital just after the doctor made his rounds and determined Dad could go home. The prognosis was still very pessimistic, but Dad was chomping at the bit to get home to his cows. So we headed that direction. We did get him to eat at Whataburger on the way. He slept most of the afternoon, and we all went to bed early.

The big deal for this morning was that Dad’s new tractor was being delivered. He was excited, despite being tired and complaining of problems with his catheter. Some minor adjustments, and he said everything was good. So we went outside to wait.

Dad couldn’t stop talking about the new tractor. He listed all of the features it had that the old one didn’t. He was especially proud that after using the old tractor for three years, the dealership offered him a thousand more in trade than he paid for it to begin with. When it arrived, a huge smile broke through the fatigue covering his face.

The driver unloaded the new tractor and got it set up while the salesman talked with Dad and Chris about a spreader Dad wanted. It had been laying in the yard for almost two years and had accumulated some sun damage, which resulted in some small breakage around the edge. Dad finally agreed to take it as-is for the price the salesman said he couldn’t reduce.

After they left, Dad was agitated that he couldn’t play with his new toy. Chris and I finally gave in. We decided that if he left it in turtle mode, it wouldn’t be any rougher than riding in a car. Dad climbed in to the cab. You could feel the joy radiating out of that tractor as he moved the eleven bales of hay that comprised the total output for the year. The drought hit hard, even though Yorktown has had more rain than the Hill Country.

After the hay was all lined up neatly along the fence, Dad wanted to hook up his disc so it would be ready when he was able to work the fields. That’s where the trouble began. The bold that forms the top pivot of the three-point connection was rusted solid. A spark from cutting that bolt loose set the grass under the implant alight. The fire spread quickly as dry grass fires are prone to do.

Neighbors were showing up to help within just a few minutes. The woman from across the road got Dad to sit in her pickup while Chris and I, soon to be joined by others, fought the fire as best we could until the fire department arrived. We may have had it mostly contained, but we would not have been able to hold without the massive amounts of water they could dump—much more than the puny water hose I was using.

All-in-all, we lost only a couple of acres of dry grass, but we lost half of the hay crop. We would have lost it all if Chris hadn’t driven the tractor through the fence and pushed the unburnt bales into the empty field across the driveway. Chris showed he could make the tractor dance while fighting the fire. The house was unharmed as were most of the implements. Two of the rubber wheels on the planter melted, as did the valve stem on a tire that must have been 20-years-old. Very little damage indeed considering the potential for disaster.

After Chris finished burying the last of the burning hay, we went inside and ate some pulled poke tacos for dinner. The meat came out of a plastic tub. The tortillas were store-bought, and the cheese was the lowest-price sliced variety at the store. It was delicious.

Then Dad said he thought we needed to go to the emergency room. His doctor was out, but the answering service said to have the ER nurse call his on-call when we got there. It turns out that the anti-clotting medicine they had prescribed for Dad causes the clots to become gummy, and one had plugged the catheter, causing Dad a lot of pain. They decided to keep him over night to make sure all of the clots were cleared out.

Zombies at Work

2011-10-25T22:41:00.006-05:00

Who wouldn’t want to dance with either of these two lovelies? Photo source: Djordje Zlatanovic Photography Blog

From the “Overheard at Work” file, appropriate for the Halloween season:

“I’ve been invited to a Zombie Ball, but I don’t know if I’m going.”

“It’s a no-brainer. Go!”

Tommy

2011-10-12T08:13:00.013-05:00

We went to see Tommy last night at Cedar Park Center (CPC). Roger Daltrey and Simon Townshend, who turns out to be Pete’s brother—I was thinking son—put on a helluva show.

As always we were a little stressed about getting there as I get off work so late. Suna wanted to go straight to the bank and then to the show. I wanted to grab a quick bite so we didn’t have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for microwaved barfburgers. We stopped at subway and still made it to the show a half-hour early. Having the performance only a few miles from the house is a real convenience! And CPC is very well-designed for access and egress. Traffic was almost pleasant. (See if I ever say that again!)

We had really good seats, but I sure hope Suna’s photos come out better than mine. Too bad we couldn’t bring a real camera and had to settle for the phones. Here’s the least bad shot of the opening act.

The opening act was an animated Welshman named Paul Freeman. He brought a rock and roll sensibility to the acoustic guitar you see in the picture.

We really enjoyed his set. Daltrey’s sound system was set perfectly for vocals accompanied by an acoustic guitar. Freeman played several originals, the a cover of Anything You Want. He wrapped up with a couple more originals and even brought a pre-teen from the audience on stage to sing with him.

While the kid was walking up, Freeman admitted, “I wish I’d known there were children in the audience a half-hour ago.’ This was in regret for dropping the F-bomb a couple of times. The kid blustered through singing his part, and Freeman made him sound good.

Then it was time for the main act.

Daltrey, Townshend, and crew take the stage.

The band was tight, moving seamlessly from one song to the next. The road crew kept the guitarists in fresh guitars, sometimes bringing Townshend more than one during a song. The show was the definition of professionalism in almost all aspects.

Tommy comprised a little less than half of the show. I am so glad I finally got to see it live. Daltrey was in excellent voice, considering he said he has undergone throat surgery and therapy “over the last two years.” In anything, Simon Townshend has a stronger voice than his brother, and he covered Pete’s parts with ease. I was also very impressed with how well Daltrey sang Entwistle’s and Moon’s songs, which are in very different ranges and timbres than his usual. Both Townshend and the guitarist (whom Daltrey introduced as his music director) used devices similar to The Vocalist, so it often sounded as if there were 12 or more voices on stage coming from the four with mikes. (The drummer had a mike, but he banged it more often than he pretended to sing into it.)

Nobody slings a mike like Daltrey! Photo source: SongKick

The sound system was perfect for the vocals, but it also provided my only complaint about the evening. It was perfect if all you wanted to hear was the vocals and the music director’s guitar. The keys were almost always buried in the mix, as you would expect for a power guitar band. Townshend’s guitar was also lost in the mix except for a few occasions where he had the dominant part. But as soon as the music director started playing, Townshend was almost inaudible.

The bass player played a Fender (Precision, I think) with an octave doubler. The lower octave was mixed a little hot, which really muddied the sound. When the drums joined in, the low frequencies had all the punch of day-old oatmeal. In short, the equipment was state-of-the-art; the mix was not. The one bright spot to a fellow bass player was when he switched to upright bass. When he did that, the nervousness drained from his body and he just played. Not only that, the sound was clear and perfect—even with the rest of the band playing.

One unique idea Daltrey brings to this tour is to post mp3s of every performance. I would suggest you check out his “Johnny Cash Medley” or the whole thing, but you’d have to buy the download to hear more than 30 seconds of any song or more than part of the intro to the Cash medley.

There were a couple of times the band stopped playing, so you could say there was an encore even though the band never really left the stage. But really, Daltrey just kept going until he could’t sing anymore. I hope he sees it as a kindness that we all left when he said goodnight instead of demanding more.

If you get a chance to see one of the other tour stops, do so.

NAMI Walk

2011-10-08T13:50:00.012-05:00

Suna and I participated in NAMI Walks in Austin this morning. It involved waking up. Early. For us.

This morning, Suna and I joined friends from Live Oak, Wildflower, and First Unitarian Universalist churches to help raise money for NAMI, the National Aliance on Mental Illness. Although we knew it was a good cause and a good walk, we were’t exactly clear on what the acronym stood for. Was it the National Association for or against Mental Illness. Neither one sounded right because both were wrong.

We met some friends at Starbucks in Round Rock, and they drove us in to the event.

The walk was too much for some of the participants. Here two volunteers try to resuscitate a poor feller who collapsed en route.

We parked across the street from the walk, which was to take us from Ladybird Lake up Congress Avenue, around the Capitol, and back again. As with many of these health-conscious events, a large part of the preparation involved eating donuts and standing around with friends. I got to take a lot of pictures of dogs, people, and the city.

“Move over there! You! Jeez, it’s easier to herd cats!

NAMI organized team pictures. I hope our captain can obtain a copy for us. It was something of an ordeal for the photographer-in-the-sky, and I want him to know his efforts are appreciated. After several attempts to get our group to move back far enough to get us all in frame, he gave up and moved his ladder. Even so, he had a little more trouble getting some of us to move to the right until he pointed out that it was his left.

Two valid points: 1) Corporatism does not equate to capitalism. 2) Corporations are not people.

One of my favorite parts of the walk was when we passed the Occupy Austin protesters who, like the Occupy Wall Street gang, are still trying to figure out what they want to replace the egregious corporate greed of our financial sector with. The UUs cheered them, and they cheered us back. (Neither group cheered as loudly on the return trip. I think we were tired.) They seem to be nice people, even if I can’t figure out what they want from their media presence. Maybe that’s because they seem to be a clearinghouse for disparate leftist agendas…like what the Democratic Party was before they were assimilated into the Wall Street Continuum. Sorry for the Star Trek mashup, but it seemed appropriate.

There was even a visitor from another planet.

Fur Coat Anyone?

2011-09-20T15:45:00.008-05:00

I guess there are two sides to every issue. The photographer agrees. Photo source: Berkley Magazine

From the "Overheard at Work" file, two guys were looking at a photograph:

“Dude! Is that a fur coat? It makes you look like a pimp.”

[immediate response] “I did have a job before this one.”

Dad Comes Home

2011-07-14T23:46:00.004-05:00

We hope the right of way looks like this sometime. Photo Source: Finger Farms

We arrived at the hospital about 08:20 to find Dad in good spirits, if a little grumpy from being awake all night. He couldn’t sleep last night because he had slept all day the previous day. No big surprise there. He doesn’t like to take drugs for pain or sleep because they can affect him the same way LSD does the general population. Just before the commissary closed, we headed down for another American breakfast, leaving Dad in the capable hands of the nurse who wanted to give him a bath while waiting for The Doctor to come by and authorise his release.

Just before noon, all the paperwork was done, and we thought we were on our way home. But Dad had to pee and couldn’t. Apparently, when we stood up, a blood clot dislodged and blocked the urethra. We spent another few hours, reflushing his system and napping, while he endured another mummy looking hospital lunch. When he was finally ready to go, we met the nutritionist on the way down. She thought we were being sarcastic when we told her how good the food was. I guess she’s used to complaints; nobody really likes the food when they don’t get much say in what it is, especially if it’s good for them and they’re used to an American diet.

We got Dad home about 15:50. He went to take a nap while Chris and I went to get his prescriptions filled. We found that the well had been “shut in.” That’s oil field talk for “shut down” either remotely or automatically. We drove by the new plant on the way into town and found it crawling with welding trucks, while workers in coveralls crowded around a large vessel. The burn-off flare was huge, meaning a lot of natural gas would not be sold.

When got back to Da Farm, each chilled in our respective busses (just like rock stars) until the temperatures dropped below the melting point of aluminium. During that time, I removed the old square TV from Ursula’s console and stored it in her belly. I also “fixed” the power adapter I broke installing the TexTag. It now looks right, but it still doesn’t have any power. I cleaned up a little and read.

That evening, Chris watered the Jiggs again while Dad and I inspected the pod. I’m kicking myself for not getting a picture of the ingenious rig Chris built for watering. He mounted a 200 gallon tank to the back of Dad’s new (a couple of years ago) John Deer tractor. A gasoline pump pushes the water through a three-inch PVC pipe with regularly spaced holes. It takes about an hour to fill the tank but only a few minutes to empty it.

Dad went to bed at his usual time (20:30). Chris and I headed to Dairy Queen to feast on nachos before bed.

A Day Waiting in the Hospital

2011-07-13T23:18:00.008-05:00

Citizens as it looked when I was born. It’s more modern now, and it takes up more than a block.Photo source: Ancestry.com

I know I haven’t been keeping this blog up. But here’s the setup: Dad needed minor surgery, and I made the trip to wait with him. I had parked the RV there on a previous trip, so all I had to do was get there. This is the day of the surgery.

Early morning this! Dad needed to be at Citizens Hospital—it has now self-promoted to a Medical Center—around 07:30, so we had to be off about an hour earlier. That isn’t difficult for early risers like Chris and Dad, but for us former alleged musician types, it’s closer to the time we’d rather head for bed than the time we’re programmed to arise—no matter how much reconditioning we’ve done in the years since. We piled into the Black Dodge, and Chris was kind enough to stop for coffee before we got out of Yorktown.

We made it to the hospital and got dad checked into his waiting room. (His procedure would normally be day surgery, but The Doctor wanted to keep him overnight because of the remonteness of Da Farm. But nobody had told the hospital that. Or nobody who mattered.) And there we waited—Dad formost, but also Chris, my brother Jim, his wife Waynette, and me.

08:00

08:30

09:00

09:06—They came to take Dad away. We walked him to surgery. We were told the procedure would take a little less than an hour, and recovery would take another hour. Then we could find Dad in his Day surgery room. (Remember the bit about nobody telling the hospital about The Doctor wanting to keep Dad overnight?) So we went to breakfast, barely making it to the commissary before the gates (literal gates) were closed at 09:30.

For those of you unfamiliar with Victoria (and who really is?), the commissary at Citizens hospital is something else. Many locals make it an dining destination. So much for the myth of bad hospital food! We all had hearty American breakfasts filled with too much bacon and too many carbs. We ate like that one meal would have to hold us all day even though we didn’t yet know the truth of that.

10:15—We went back up to Surgery to wait for a status update.

10:25—The Doctor told us everything went well and he had taken “random biopsies” to check for any tumerous recurrances. We would just have to wait for Monday (if the stars align in a way that rearranges the fabric of space-time but doesn’t open a portal for the return of the Old Ones, and everything else goes well) or later (more likely) to know what the next steps in Dad’s treatment plan will be.

Citizens has an aquarium filled with really interesting fish like this neon blue thing. The aquarium is in the waiting area near my favorite napping spot.

11:15—We started asking where they will take Dad so we can be there. “The day surgery room where they got him from.”

“But,” we explained again, “The Doctor wants to keep him overnight.” Of course, nobody the people in surgery were aware of that. They directed us to Admitting. Admitting doesn’t know about post surgical room assignments. “That’s all handled by the Surgical nurse.” This time we asked a different Surgical Staffer, who verified that post surgical room assignments were indeed handled by Sugical Staff when the patient is ready to leave Recovery. A few minutes later, she tells us, “He'll be in 638. They’ll be bringing him out in a few minutes, and you can follow him up there.”

This little fella is waiting at the farm supply for someone to take him home. My friends tell me his name is Buford, and kids love to ride him and practice roping.

11:55—True to her word, a few minutes later, we saw Dad wheeling by and start to follow. But the elevator ws full. No worries; we kew the room number. We caught the next ride up to the sixth floor and begin looking for him. Unfortunately, there is no room 638. We all confirmed that we had all heard the same number. Then we found him in 628. He was still on another plane, phasing in and out of our reality, so we each told him we love him and we’ll let him sleep it off in peace. Then we drove off to buy fertilizer.

13:30—We found Dad still sound asleep and went downstairs to wait and inadvertantly nap.

15:00—We returned to find Dad somewhat awake. We spent the next few hours watching him gradually shake off the anesthesia and rejoin our world. We joked and told old stories and picked at each other mercilessly—you know: the kind of things families do to pretend they are not having the shit stressed out of them.

18:45—They brought Dad dinner. We made a show out of telling him what there was and getting the nutritionist to “sell him the menu” instead of just saying, “here’s food.” If you offer Dad something to eat, he’ll invariably say, “No, I’m not hungry right now.” But if you tell him what it is, he’ll realize he likes whatever is being served and start to take interest.

After getting him to eat a little of his dinner, we could that he was starting to get tired. We bid him a fond adeiu (or is it a bon fondu?) and headed off to eat too much at a new Chineese buffet. Our old favorite Chineese buffet is now a Mexican buffet—still run by the same Chineese staff. Imagine that.

20:15—We made it to the farm. Chris spread the fertilizer he bought earlier and put 400 gallons of water on the Jiggs he is sprigging over the pipeline right of way. Jim and Waynette went to bed in Dad’s trailer. Chris and I stayed up talking about nothing in particular until way too late.

The Band of Heathens

2011-03-15T23:51:00.010-05:00

Matt the Electrician opened for The Band of Heathens.

Suna won tickets to go see The Band of Heathens today. She had to brave downtown Austin twice: first she had to go pick up the tickets from KUT, and then she had to drive us down there for the show.

She drove because I hate driving downtown. So she picked me up from work, and we headed straight to the concert at Antone’s. Traffic was incredibly light considering we were in the middle of SXSW, and we got there in only a half hour. That left us an hour to kill before they even opened the doors.

I found the teller machine and then we walked Antone’s. We stayed outside looking at the skyline, looking at the front door, looking at the skyline, and listening to some kind of a punk band at The Lucky Lounge next door. Finally they opened the doors and let us in.

This guy did a really good job filling in on lead guitar for Matt the Electrician.

I was completely unprepared. I had wanted to get there early so that we could get good seats, but when we got and we found there is no seating at Antone’s. It is a big stage with a big open floor and several bars. They have room for the merchandise set up and their little bitty record store. But there was only standing room. When they say it’s SRO at Antone’s, they aren’t kidding.

The new album is well worth the money. Buy it from the band.

Suna and I each pick up identical heathens T-shirts. Well, not identical. They are at our respective sizes. And we got the new album. It was a CD release party after all. What about the vinyl edition because it had for bonus tracks and came with a CD anyway.

We met some nice people and talked with them and save each other’s places sitting on the stage so that we could be that close to bands when they started. One of the young girls that we were talking to was there waiting on her father who apparently had taken her to see the band of heathens when she was still wager young to be in the clubs. Boy that something I know something about, having grown up in bars—but those usually had chairs and tables.

Finally Matt the Electrician started his set. If you know Matt, I don’t need to say anything. If you don’t know him, saying anything about him won’t do the job. He’s a really good pop singer who plays a ratty old banjo and tells great stories between the songs. You can listen to one of his songs here.

This guy (I really should learn their names) acted like the leader. At least, he had no problems telling the keyboard player to play in a lower register.

Matt ended his set with a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times, Bad Times,” taking his guitarist completely by surprise. The guy (whose name I didn’t catch, but Suna says he plays for Slaid Cleves) took it in stride. He seemed fairly nonplused and even managed a good solo. I was impressed with Matt’s ability to cover this song. He did better than Plant, but so would a cat undergoing castration without anesthetics.

The girl’s father showed up shortly before The Heathens took the stage, sometime during The Electrician’s set. And when they did, OMG…

We owned both of their previous studio CDs, so I was somewhat familiar with the music, but I wasn’t really prepared. The Heathens are definitely a live band. The albums, although very good and worth listening to on their own, don’t do them justice. I’m going to have to buy a couple of their live CDs and see if those catch the heart and spirit of the performance.

Here is a real professional, untouched by any melodrama unfolding on stage around him.

Let me tell you, brother. The Heathens rock. They rock. Even though they’re singer songwriters, The Heathens is an electric band, and they rock.

The Heathens includes three lead vocalists, each of whom can stand on his own. The apparent leader plays an adequate guitar. He learns his parts and place them well, but his real job is to be a singer. And he sings very well indeed. The other main guitarist seems like an old-timey blues stringer. He can play a mean guitar, a slide guitar, a mandolin like the one we bought for Tubaboy, and just about anything else he wants I bet. The last vocalist (of whom I was unable to get a good picture) sounds a lot like Kenny Loggins in the early Loggins and Messina days. He’s also the best guitarist of three. He smokes, and he’s a pretty damn good keyboard player, too.

The bassist¹ and the other (my favorite) singer

I didn’t get the bass player’s name, but I did get an acceptable picture of him. The sad thing was that they didn’t run him through the house mains. He was competing with the band was just his unmiked, mid-sized Ampeg rig. They didn’t even run him through the subs hidden under the stage. So sad. But then mostly what he played was quarter notes on the tonic. I think this was to satisfy some perverse tendency of the guitarists because when he went for it, he let loose with some interesting chops that I could barely hear. Strangely enough, he is very present on the studio CDs.

1 Note the piece of foam near the tailpiece. It’s there to keep the strings from ringing. All Fender basses used to come with a chrome tailpiece cover that had a damper built in. Why “used to?” Well, you can still get it if you order it, but most bass players take it off, anyway. The tailpiece and pickup covers on my ’72 Jazz lasted about five minutes. That’s how long it took me to find a screwdriver once I got my favorite bass home.

Brithday Table Topics

2011-03-02T22:02:00.006-06:00

Apparently my friend isn’t the only one who likes Birthday Pie. Original photo from: merrimentdesign

Suna’s birthday is this Saturday. So I’ve been thinking a lot about birthdays.

This is a list of Table Topics questions I used at today’s Toastmasters meeting. Rather than having volunteers choose a number, I just picked a topic for them, including (jokingly) asking the guy I know never watches movies, “What’s your favorite birthday movie?”

Tell us about your favorite birthday memory.
Tell us about your worst birthday experience.
James Doohan who played Scotty on original Star Trek series, would’ve been 91 today. Tell us about your favorite Scotty moment.¹
Do you keep your birthday secret from your coworkers? Why or why not?
Describe the wonders of cake.²
How do you usually celebrate your birthday?
Adults typically fall and one of three categories:
- They lie about their age.
- They don’t worry about her age and may not even know what it is.
- Or they are proud of their age.
Into which camp do you fall, and why?

Notes

Substitute any celebrity birthday.
I half expected to get a dissertation about the band, Cake. Instead, I got a wonderful story about birthday pie.

A Cup of Statistics

2011-01-12T22:49:00.015-06:00

As this hoodie (available on Cafe Press) suggests, we should always be aware of risk. Relative statistics do little to help us evaluate the risks we take.

Here is the text of the speech I delivered today at Toastmasters. It is a bit of a ramble because I procrastinated and didn’t have time to apply sound instructional design to it. I also tried a physical ending, which confused at least one member of my audience.

The speech ran a little long, so I’ve marked some of the text for removal if I ever deliver it again.

Mark Twain may have said it best. “There are three types of liars: liars, damned liars, and statisticians.” In his 1952 classic, Elementary Statistical Analysis, Harry Hartkemeier says Twain implies that statisticians “have reached the superlative.” There is no better liar than a statistician.
But as much as we distrust statisticians, we all love to bandy numbers to support our points. I’ve heard that as much as 67.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
We love numbers, but we believe them only when they support our views. Why is that?
Have you ever deliberately falsified the numbers to support your claims?
Do you know someone who has?
Yes, we’ve all read about sloppy scientists who have [falsified the data]. We may know someone who has. We may even have done so occasionally ourselves, as with my reference to the percentage of impromptu statistics. Actually, less than half of all statistics are made up.
So why don’t we trust statistics?

They don’t seem to yield any useful information.

They are often contradictory.

They’re almost always confusing.

And speaking of statistics made up on the spot… Photo source: Dirt & Seeds

Like many on the right, I blame the liberal media. And like many on the left, I blame Fox News.
The media has become fixated on numbers. Statistics make sloppy reporting sound more credible. And in the drive for audience, they focus on one type of statistics above all others—relative statistics.
Now you won’t be able to find a textbook on relative statistics. It isn’t a real branch of the actual science. That comprises:

Descriptive statistics, which summarizes data by describing what was observed in a sample

Inferential statistics, which uses patterns in the sample data to draw inferences about the data

Inferential statistics is most often used in scientific research looking for a correlation between two variables.
And that’s where we begin to get into trouble. The first problem is that people unfamiliar with the scientific method confuse correlation and cause even though the first thing you lean in Intro to Statistics is that correlation does not equate to cause. Correlation does not equate to cause.
Early in the century, two separately reported studies told us that people who drink more than four cups of coffee every day have:

A 40% increased risk of colon cancer

A 40% decreased risk of heart disease

Sounds like a wash, right?
But increased and decreased risk are relative statistics. Even saying that something increases your risk of dying by 100% doesn’t give you enough information to make an informed decision.

If choosing one behavior over another increases your risk from 1/1B to 2/1B, that is a 100% increase—but not much of a risk.

If it increases your risk from 1/1000 to 1/500, it’s still a 100% increase. And it poses a much more immediate risk.

But even in the second case choose one behavior or the other won’t ensure you to live or die.

Another way relative statistics causes problems is that the media may only report one side of the equation. NaturalNews.com reports on a study in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine saying that women who take antibiotics during pregnancy are significantly more likely to deliver babies with birth defects than those who don’t.

Mothers of children with a fatal skull and brain malformation were three times more likely to have taken a sulfa drug than women whose children did not have the defect.

Kids with cleft lips or palates were twice when mothers had taken nitrofurantoins, which were also linked to congenital heart defects, eye defects, and being born missing one or both eyes.

Penicillin was associated with a higher risk of a kind of limb malformation.

The report fails to mention what these women were being treated for. We have no information about whether the conditions the women had could have similarly damage or even killed the fetuses. We do know that if the disease had killed the mother, the baby would not have had a birth defect.
The media loves to report relative risk because phrases like “100% increased risk” or “three times more likely” or “half as likely” get your heart going. They scare you. They make you want to pay attention to what the reporter says.
And about coffee: it turns out coffee may reduce the risk of colon cancer by speeding the passage of carcinogens through your gut. Web MD says the decreased risk of heart disease ranges between 19%–91%—no descriptive statistics there.
But it does explain the mechanism of the reduction: antioxidants and anti—inflammatory compounds in the brew.
So the next time you hear about relative risk, know that the information is probably reliable but useless. Hearing the numbers should start your research, not make up your mind. It’s up to you to find out what the numbers really mean.
Oh, and now they say coffee also reduces your risk of Type 2 Diabetes. Who cares if the statistics are only relative? I’m going for another cup!

Not one of my best efforts. Maybe I’d give it a B.

A Mama’s Boy Remembers

2010-11-11T16:11:00.009-06:00

Mom and me somewhere I don’t recognize

Here is another of my speeches for Toastmasters. It is Speech Six from the Competent Communicators manual, Vocal Variety. I delivered it today.

I’ll warn you up front, this is a bit of a ramble. Memories tend to be. They all blend together over time, especially the important ones, forming a gentle patina.

Even though she had to quit high school and go to work when her parents died within six months of each other, my mom was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. She was also one of the funniest, but you’d never know that by the jokes she told. Let me give an example:

Two painters were going though the countryside painting churches. Even though it was the Depression and they didn’t have a lot other than each other’s company, the never went hungry. But being people, they wanted more.
One day one of them said to his partner, “You know. If we thinned the paint, we could paint twice as many churches for the same cost. We’d make a lot more money.”
“We sure would,” Partner said. “Let’s do it.”
So the next church they painted, they thinned the paint. They were just finishing up and thinking about how much money they’d make when a thunderstorm blew up. The thunder crashed, the wind blew the rain sideways, and the storm washed all of the thinned paint off the building.
Looking at the havoc the storm had wrought on their work, they were devastated. “What are we gonna do now?” they moaned.
A voice from the clouds advised, “Repaint and thin no more.”

Mom’s sense of humor was gentle and consistent.

I remember her trying to cheer up the ICU staff—telling jokes and pretending to dance while she was dying strapped to a ventilator.
I remember her worrying that I would have to drive home after dark the night before she had open heart surgery.
I remember her making my girlfriends in high school laugh by making fun of her own outlandish garage sale jewelry.

She had this one necklace that had these two huge gold-painted balls dangling from a string of plastic pearls. I heard her cry out from the kitchen one day. I rushed to see what was wrong. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “I just closed the oven door on my balls.”

Now there’s a visual that will give a teenage boy nightmares.

How do I know she was smart? Other than my dad, I admired two men who respected her.

Mr. Morrison, ran a construction company and owned several banks.¹ He helped convince Lloyd Bentsen, the senator for whom much of US-59 is named, to go into politics. When the salt dome in Louisiana caught fire in the mid 1970s, Mr. Morrison called Senator Benson. “Lloyd,” he said. “It’s just like our goddamn government. First, they buy up all the oil, driving up the price so nobody can afford to drive.² Then they put in back in the ground where we’ll never get all back out. And now they’ve set the sonuvabitch on fire,” he exclaimed slamming the phone back on the hook. We used to take bets on how many times it would bounce before it fell off his desk. That time it bounced three times before crashing onto the worn linoleum floor.

Mr. Morrison didn’t mince words. He fired his building superintendent three times one day. Then called him up the next morning and cussed him out for not showing up for work.

Mom was his sales manager. She was the person he consulted when buying or selling houses for more than a decade.

That’s one way I know she was smart. The way I know was my grandfather.

Granddaddy was a typical early-20th century German farmer. He defined chauvinism. When he was ready to retire, he called the family together to get advice on what to do with the farm. My dad and uncle Carole started to say something, but Granddaddy cut them off with a flick of his hand. “I don’t care vat you say. I vant to know vat Kay sinks I should do.”

This August marked the 10th anniversary of her death.

I still miss you, Mom.

But rather than closing on a down note, here’s another one of her favorites:

A cop pulled a man over for not signaling a left turn.
“But I did signal,” the man protested.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did,” the man insisted. “Just ask my wife. She was sitting right here beside me. She saw me signal.”
“Well, ma’am” the cop said. “Did he signal?”

“Well, officer. If I’ve learned anything in 40 years of being married to that man, it’s never to argue with him when he’s drunk.”

Notes

I really don’t know the extent of Mr. Morrison’s wealth. He lived in a really nice house, but his faded Olds was at least a decade old. That’s 10 years in the salt and chemical fallout of Brazosport, Texas. I remember him griping about the amount of taxes he had to pay on the sale of a bank. Mom told him, “I just wish I made as much as you pay in taxes.” I think he kept her around for perspective, too.
As I recall, gas prices were astronomical—around a dollar a gallon, but that was when you could find it.

Book Review: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

2010-07-17T11:16:00.009-05:00

Grahame-Smith, Seth, (2010). Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. New York: Grand Central Publishing. Photo source: Amazon.com

Until I read Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, I hadn’t realized how much the readability of Seth Grahame-Smith’s previous book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, was derived from the original. While I admired the near seamless integration of zombies into Alcott’s social commentary, I considered the result more of a collaboration than an outright theft.

In Lincoln, Grahame-Smith attempts an interesting technique. After setting up the situation where a failed writer—how’s that for another cliché?—comes into possession of Abraham Lincoln’s secret diaries, Grahame-Smith randomly switches voice and often tense by inserting sections from the diaries into his narrative. The result read like a tenth-grade history paper in which the author is desperately trying to meet the teacher’s length requirement. Instead of abetting the flow of the story, the device constantly knocks the reader out of the story.

Character development is lacking. Who would have thought anyone could depict Abe Lincoln as a flat, uninspiring character. If that was Grahame-Smith’s intent, he succeeded.

One of the best things I can say about the book is that I found no glaring grammatical errors and no blatant historical inaccuracies. Aside from vampires, and they are a given.

I can’t say if this is a good thing or not, but I was completely unable to categorize Lincoln, not that I’m a true believer in forcing art to fit into neat little boxes. Lincoln is not a vampire story, nor is it really historical fiction. It is neither folkloric nor alternative history, neither enthralling nor fatiguing.

None of this is to say you shouldn’t read Lincoln. It is a quick read and fairly entertaining. It passes my three question test.

	Did I finish it?	Yes. This, in and of itself, speaks volumes. I don’t have much time to read for pleasure anymore, and I stuck with this book to the predictable end.
	Was it worth the effort?	Maybe. As I said, it is a quick, relatively entertaining read. Granted, it feels like Lincoln was written before P&P&Z and was published solely on the success of that book.
	How many other books did I finish in the process of reading this one?	None. I did wander off into a couple of real histories—but they were only a minor distraction

Using a five-star scale, Lincoln rates a solid two stars. It’s worth reading in an airport or on a train, but save it for a trip.

The Lion’s Share of Meaning

2010-07-15T15:36:00.005-05:00

Never trust a hungry lion. Photo source: Richard Wiseman Blog

Today’s post is the text of a speech I delivered at Toastmasters today. I hope you enjoy it.

A word can mean so many things – anything, everything, or nothing. We argue over the meaning of words incessantly. Nobody wins.
Today, I’m going to talk about the intersection of semantics and lexicology – that lonely place where meaning lives.
Don’t be scared. That’s almost all the linguistic jargon I’m going to use.

Jargon is one of my favorite words. It comes from a French word that means “the twittering of birds.” In what John Ciardi, one of my favorite etymologists, would call “ghost etymology” (a word history somebody made up because it sounds good), I once read jargon comes from jargere, which the writer said means “to make a choking, strangling noise at the back of your throat.” I wish I could verify that particular meaning.

Every profession or clique has its own jargon — its own theives cant — designed as much to streamline communication within the group as to occult it from outsiders.

Instead of jargon, nomenclature, or whatever, I’m going to tell a story I like to call “The Lion’s Share of Meaning.”
But before I get to that, let me ask you a question.
Is it more important to be understood or to be right?
Robert Heinlein said, “If you’re arguing with your spouse, and it turns out you’re right, apologize immediately.” He also said, “You can be forgiven for being wrong a lot faster than for being right.”

Have you ever heard an argument so rabid as one between two people who agree with one another but use different words to state their points? Not unless it was one that arose from a broken understanding when people used the same words to mean different things.

These are often the arguments that lead to irreconcilable hurt feelings, to the dissolution of friendships, to violence.
Pride and Words are at the heart of these arguments. We seem to have an unquenchable need to be right. Sometimes it’s easier to say someone else is wrong than to prove we’re right.
And that calls into question the meaning of being right. What does it mean to be right?
The story that comprises the lion’s share of my speech comes from Aesop via John Ciardi.

What does “the lion’s share” mean?
Here’s how it started:
The lion organized a hunting party. After the party made the kill, the lion stepped up to the carcass and said, “As the King of Beasts and organizer of this hunt, I deserve half of the kill.”
The other animals grudgingly admitted that was the lion’s right. So does “the lion’s share” mean half?
No. As the other animals closed in, the lion raised his voice. “And my wife and children deserve half of what remains because they are my family.” Again, the rest of the hunters conceded the right of the lion’s family to another quarter of the carcass. So does “the lion’s share” mean three-quarters?
Not really. As the hungry hunters hunkered closer to the carcass, the lion said, “And I’ll fight anyone who wants any of the remainder.”
So “the lion’s share” doesn’t mean half or most or three-fourths. It means the lion wants it all. But if you use the phrase correctly, nobody will know what you mean. As John Ciardi advises, “Never be so right as to be misunderstood.”
It’s more important to be understood than to be right. It’s more important to understand what each other’s words really mean. Sometimes you may find, you agree.

Weekend Trip Back “Home”

2010-06-27T21:29:00.018-05:00

Approximate Trip Routing Map by: Google

Suna and I planned a trip back to see some of my family this weekend. Unfortunately, life intervened in a minor way. Suna had a conference where she could see some of her old friends, and I had a leadership training session with Toastmasters Saturday morning. All that means we left about 16:00 for a four-hour trip to Brazosport.

Since we had plenty of daylight this soon after the Solstice, I decided to show Suna the little town where I lived my first four years of elementary school, Brazoria. I needn’t have bothered. I didn’t recognize anything about the town. Even the old school was missing. I could have been on Mars for what I knew about my home town.

A Chemical Flare at Dow

Feeling a little odd, we went on to the hotel and checked in. From the room, we could see a flare at Plant B, part of the huge petrochemical installation that forms the heart of the Brazosport economy. That and the smell of hydrocarbons in the air made me feel like I was home again—and remember why I left. Although in the name of full disclosure, I must admit I do hold Dow Chemical stock.

After looking out the window and unpacking, we decided to get a bite to eat. We went looking for seafood, but the closest place was closed.

The Hometown Café in Angleton, Texas

Right across from it was El Toro, a TexMex café we used to eat at when I was a kid. Like Brazoria, El Toro was nothing like I remembered. It has a full bar, great margaritas, and about three times the seating capacity. There is even a painting of Superman flying across the ceiling. About the only thing that is the same is that the food is every bit as good as I remembered. The portions are a little smaller, but that is a good thing.

Suna Visiting with My Family

By the time we finished eating and got back to the hotel, it was almost 22:00, and we were tireder than we expected.

We lazed in bed for a while this morning before heading to Angleton to visit my nephew, his daughter who was visiting from California, and her new baby, my great-great-nephew. How can that be? I’m not that old.

Suna Has a Gift for Bocce

Anyway, Suna wanted eggs for lunch, and my brother Jim recommended the Hometown Café. It doesn’t look like much from the outside. Really, it doesn’t look like much from the inside either. But the food is decent, the prices are good, and the service is friendly. Texas Monthly has even named it on to the 40 best small town cafés in Texas.

We finally arrived at my nephew’s house about 13:30—roughly 3-½ hours early—to find the party well under way. We chatted. We played a variant of bocce ball. We tried to stay dry and in the shade. We had a really good time. We ate some more. We visited.

Finally, we headed home. And here I am again—tireder than expected.

Father′s Day

2010-06-20T22:48:00.007-05:00

Packaging for The Vampire Tarot Photo source: Cult of Personality

Father’s Day is one of those quaint traditions that I never paid that much attention to. I know it was important to Dad, so I always make a point of calling him some time during the day. Other than that, it′s always been yet another way for Hallmark to make money. No biggie.

This year, Tubaboy and Beccano chipped in and bought me The Vampire Tarot. It’s really cool—well thought out and beautifully illustrated. I’ll try to do a more thorough review either here or on Tarot Obsession soon.

Other than that, yard work in the Texas sun. It wasn’t that bad. It still hasn’t hit a hundred degrees yet. And once it does, the grass won’t grow enough to worry about mowing that often.

Wine Tour

2010-06-19T20:33:00.008-05:00

View Larger Map Route from Live Oak (A) to Fall Creek (B) to Llano (C) and Back (D)

OK. “Wine Tour” may be a little bit of an exaggeration. We only stopped at one winery. But it was a wonderful day trip with a bunch of people Suna and I had never met.

The tour was organized by Congregation Shir Ami, the Jewish community who share the facility with us at Live Oak. I was a little apprehensive about not knowing anyone, but someone said, “We know what it’s like to be the outsider,” and the proceeded to make us feel like we belonged. They even insisted we join their group photo by the bus at Fall Creek.

We left Live Oak about 09:30, which meant we had to get up as if this Saturday were a work day. But we did it. We weren’t even the last ones to arrive. That is always something of an accomplishment for me. We spent much of the trip to Fall Creek getting to know those sitting around us and commenting on how much better even everyday sights look when seen from a tour bus.

Suna by Fall Creek Grapes

Fall Creek is a family-owned vineyard that started as a hobby after the owner’s trip to France. He decided he wanted to grow grapes. Making wine was the next logical step. Now they don’t have enough wall space to display all their awards.

The tasting included a number of wines. The sign said six, but nobody was counting. I thought they were all good, which means Suna didn’t like some of them. We bought the Sweet Red, the chenin blanc, a cabernet sauvignon, and a few others.

From Fall Creek, we traveled to Llano to have lunch at The Acme Cafe on the Square in Llano. If you have eaten there, I don’t have to tell you how good it is. If you haven’t, I don’t think I can. It certainly isn’t the hole-in-the-wall-small-town-Texas eatery it looks like from the outside. I would have never thought of stopping in if it hadn’t been part of the tour.

The Acme in Llano

Everything they served was ample and delicious. Much of it was unique. Suna said her chicken salad was the best one she had ever eaten because of the hand-made vinaigrette. It appeared to have more herbs and spices than oil and vinegar.

I played it safe with a burger. I added chili, sauteed mushrooms, and jalapeños. I was little apprehensive when the waitress just shrugged and didn’t make a note when I asked for my burger well done. I hate pink burgers (probably because I’ve been to meat packing plants), and I’m not afraid to send one back. It was perfect and delicious, but that may be the only way they know how to cook ’em. One of our cohort later complained that he sent three back because they apparently didn’t know how to make a burger medium well.

On the way back, we sang Broadway tunes. We sang with gusto if not pitch. Have I mentioned I hate show tunes? Oh, well.

It was a great trip, but I’m glad to be home with a new case of wine.

Dinner with Friends and Family

2010-06-18T22:26:00.009-05:00

Beer in a Scarf

It has been one interesting week. I started off by delivering a workshop on writing assessment questions. Two days were devoted to learning the new LMS we’re implementing at work. iTunes ate my library, including all the apps on my iPhone when I synced to the rebuilt library. That meant I couldn’t get to my work email on the phone for a couple of day.

While all that was going on, I still had to keep up with doing most of my assessment analysis. I don’t have a good client database built for this, so I use Microsoft Excel, which is a real pain. This morning, XL (I like to call Excel XL because its files are always extra large.) quit opening. It just crashes on load. Uninstalling and reinstalling Office didn’t help, and the problem exists only with XL. I spent most of the day trying unsuccessfully to troubleshot this issue.

You can see I was mighty happy to see the end of the week arrive. I invited two of my work buddies, who were visiting from California, to dinner at Mesa Rosa with the family. Suna and I had a really nice time chatting and exchanging stories.

RB and CR both ordered Negro Modelo, which came dressed in these little scarves. Unfortunately, I failed to notice the side of the beer they wanted me to take a picture of was facing away from me. The front of the scarf, which you can’t see in the photo, is tied in a cute little scarfy knot.

Unfortunately, RB had to catch a 06:30 flight home, so we couldn’t hang too long. But we did have enough time to put the work week fully behind me. I hope we can do more next time either of them visits Austin or I’m in California.

Book Review: Brains: A Zombie Memoir

2010-06-14T20:40:00.014-05:00

Becker, Robin (2010). Brains: A Zombie Memoir. Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press. Cover Courtesy of: Harper Collins, Canada

Robin Becker’s first novel Brains: A Zombie Memoir stands the zombie genre on its ear. Literally. The ear happens to be on the ground, and the zombie stands on it before popping the tasty morsel into its mouth.

Becker anthropomorphizes zombies in Brains. Her main character is a professor of literature who retains his sentience through the transformation. Granted, I’ve known several professors whom I thought might be zombies, but the only one I was sure of was a civics professor.

Once she makes this single break from the genre cannon, all bets are off. Becker writes in a morbidly campy style that she admits is unlike anything she’s done before. Brains is a light, enjoyable read full of snickers and an occasional belly laugh.

The only negative is that Becker sometimes tries too hard to make her jokes work. She stacks the one-liners four or five deep, oblivious to Johnny Carson’s rule—Never do more than three jokes on a topic. Perhaps this is a lesson to learn from her first novel; perhaps it is simply the professor’s character. I have known several who couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Spring = Compost and Roses

2010-02-28T17:00:00.006-06:00

I’ve been neglecting this blog lately. Something about this winter has made it difficult to motivate myself to write anything. I blame Facebook. Facebook can easily suck up any available time you have for other pursuits.

But today, I have something to say.

First I feel bad about missing an obligation. I was supposed to work on the church today as part of a Hands on Live Oak thing. But the sun woke me up early, and I got up to make coffee and enjoy the stillness of the morning and the singing of the birds (which turned out to be the Aerogrow garden). Then I decided to do some work around the house instead of going to church.

James Earl Jones believed that you have to have some connection to the earth to be healthy. He had a shallow pit in one of his flowerbeds where he would lay and meditate. My connection is in the garden where I think more in terms of tending the soil than the plants. If the soil is healthy, whatever you plant there will be, too.

So my first project was to work the compost pile. It yielded about a half-yard of delicious, rich blackness. I also found that one of our variegated ginger plants had survived the winter intact. I’m hoping that the others come back from the roots. They are supposed to be cold hardy in this region. We’ll see.

Then Suna and I went to Home Depot to buy some plants. We got some coleuses and three rose bushes to replace the two that died last year:

Apricot nectar (yellow floribunda)
Iceberg (white floribunda)
Double delight (red and yellow hybrid tea rose)

This is the first time I have tried the Biozome roses, which are advertised to be “easier on the environment” because they need less fertilizer. We also bought some wild bird seed formulated for our region and a new feeder and birdseed for small birds.

Back at the casa, I turned turned the compost into the shade bed and area where we lost the two rose bushes last year. Then I stuck all the plants into the dirt.

So while I didn’t do what I was supposed to do today, I feel good about what I did accomplish.

White Sands National Monument

2009-11-25T20:16:00.004-06:00

We woke up Tuesday morning and headed to White Sands National Monument before heading home. It was great to see all of that nothingness. We managed to get in and out without buying any nicknacks.

We came back through the Lincoln National Forrest, where it turns out you can buy Christmas trees.

The RV was much happier losing several thousand feet of altitude over the trip home than it was climbing to New Mexico. We made it home just before 11:00 o’clock last night for a night asleep in our own bed before heading out to Angleton for Thanksgiving with many of the same people we were with in Alamogordo.

The Funeral and Stress Relief

2009-11-23T23:08:00.000-06:00

I hate it when a preacher who has never met anyone in the family and doesn’t even bother to learn how to pronounce the name of the deceased gets brought in for the service. How hard is it to remember “Dorothy?” It only gets worse when said preacher, however well intentioned, takes it upon himself to ignore the reason why he was brought in (I suppose he had some fiduciary arrangement with the funeral home) and elects to treat the mourners as a captive audience for his own brand of evangelism.

I elected not to point out that the story of Jesus and the prostitute might not have been appropriate for the situation and that it did not even become part of the written cannon until more than 600 years after Jesus was crucified. I was proud of myself for showing such restraint. The one good point was that I was too pissed to grieve at the moment.

After the graveside portion of the service concluded, we all went to the furniture store where Kay works to have a final meal together. Her boss provided lots of food and told us to use the store, which is closed on Mondays, as a house. Again, the kindness was touching.

We soon began disbursing back to the various directions from which we had descended on Alamogordo. Suna and I headed north to the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site—where ancient Jornada Mogollons scratched ritual drawings on rocks for almost 400 years. Many of the petroglyphs are truly astounding, if difficult to photograph. (The best of the pictures I took will be posted on Facebook soon.)

The solitude and quietness of the site were what I needed to heal a little bit, not to mention the mile-long hike in the mountains. But it was not enough for me to feel up to seeing a couple of Suna’s friends who live in Las Cruces. I had been looking forward to it. After all, this is the first time in more than 10 years I’ve been in New Mexico. But I was emotionally exhausted. I pulled back into the RV park after purchasing some pistachio products from a store that features the “world’s largest pistachio” and promptly fell asleep watching Monday Night Football.

The Viewing

2009-11-22T23:34:00.003-06:00

The Viewing was hard. It was the first time in several years I had seen Dot or many of the relatives there. Sadness abounded. But we each had an opportunity to say a private good-bye. I was proud that my brother held up well.

Of course, Dot’s kids—Kay, Cindy, Bobby, Jan, and Glen—were all there. My niece Gaylene drove in with her husband and mother. There were lots of great nieces, great nephews, and their kids. Dot’s former boss drove in, and Kay’s current boss, who also knew Dot, was there, too.

Cindy works at the local Best Western, and her boss comped all the rooms for the family. I thought that was a kindness above and beyond. I certainly appreciated the gesture, even though I did’t stay there.

Afterward, we gathered at the Boot Hill RV Resort where I had a space next to my nephew Chris’s bus. Chris and I went to Wally World, and he bought a bunch of stuff to serve at the wake. He broke a smoker, table, and other supplies out of his bus and set up a Wii for the kids, many of whom were too young to understand what was going on.

It sure was fun (and soothing) watching the kids run around and play while Chris grilled burgers and dogs. The adults spend time catching up on the intervening years and slowly coming to terms with mortality.

When we get settled, I’ll post a bunch of the pictures on Facebook.

Going West

2009-11-21T23:28:00.007-06:00

Our routing to Alamogordo. More pictures of the trip are posted on Facebook Photo source: Google Maps

Suna and I finished packing the rented RV and headed out for Alamorgordo, New Mexico this morning. The GPS I picked up yesterday provided an interesting route that would take right at 11 hours, including breaks for fuel and a meal. It wasn’t the route I would have mapped, but it was the quickest, most direct one. We enjoyed the changes in scenery.

We left Austin headed north on US-183 to Texas 29. That part I would have guessed. We picked up Texas 71 and headed for San Angelo. We passed a new wind farm on the way, and Suna took some pictures of the gigantic wind mills.

The first surprise in the routing came when the GPS directed us north through Big Spring. I had expected to head west on I-20. Instead, we continued north to US-180.

The RV strained as we continued to gain altitude moving west. The scenery grew more desert-like and flatter to all appearances. Only the inability to use overdrive at more than 67 MPH told us we were climbing.

Of course, the most interesting part of the trip came after dark. That’s when we passed through the Lincoln National Forrest and over the first ridge of the Rockies. We were coming out of Cloudcroft on the final approach to Alamogordo when Suna said, “Stop. Stop. Deer in the road.” I didn’t see anything, but I took her word for it and hit the breaks. An elk was standing in the road expressing his disdain for the vehicles stopping in his behalf. The first I saw of him was the dark spot on his chest when we started moving.

We saw several more elk crossing the road before we got to the 6% grade that took us into Alamogordo. We made it into the park without further incident and set up for the night.

RIP, Dot

2009-11-18T14:41:00.010-06:00

Image Source:
Moon Angel

When I was little, we were so close it used to scare Mom. Like the time I was playing with my blocks and started crying for no apparent reason. Mom told me she picked me up and asked what was wrong. “My Doroth’s sad.” A couple of hours later, Dot called and said she and her husband had had a big fight and wanted to know if she could come home.

Another time I started cleaning up my toys. When Mom asked why, I told her Dorothy was coming. Since she lived out-of-state, Mom said that wasn’t likely. But she showed up for a surprise visit a couple of hours later.

As we got older, we grew apart as siblings often do. A casual search of this blog shows that this is the first time I’ve mentioned her. We didn’t stay in contact much, but we knew we could always count on each other.

Now she’s gone. I’ll miss you, Big Sister.

Samhain

2009-10-31T23:44:00.011-05:00

Suna and I in 2006, when we won the costume contest. I wore the same costume this year sans beard and glasses but with a bit more grunge.Photo by: Genea

Samhain. Halloween to most in the United States and All Hallows Eve to some. I missed it lady year due to a football game. So I was really glad to be home for it and have it coincide with a nearly full moon. Nothing like Halloween and a full moon.

We had the house decorated with electric pumpkins, foam headstones, and a giant vampire bat, not to mention various miscellaneous decor items. We received many compliments from the adult supervisors as the night wore on.

But most fun was scaring the kids.

I resurrected my “Happy Reaper” costume. Suna told me I couldn’t scare the little ones, so I just tried to stay still as much as I could. Most of the kids didn’t notice, but the ones who caught on to the fact that I didn’t blink were creeped out.

One little Asian boy walked up to me and asked, “Are you real?”

“No,” I said.

He laughed and said, “Yes, you are. You just talked.”

Part of my costume involved blood worms and plastic spiders tangled in my green hair. Every now and then ad then as a kid reached for the candy, I would pull a green tangle and ask, “Would you rather have a spider?”

“Sure,” exclaimed the bravest of a trio of middle school girls as she ripped the plastic delicacy from my hair. Her friends drew back with a shudder.

Suna asked that I go see Gina’s decorations. On the way back, I passed two groups of girls, one high school, the second middle school, trying not to look like they were our together. I aimed straight for the edge of the sidewalk so that I could pass without appearing to yield ground. The older girls brazened it out without dropping their eyes, but laughed in nervous release as soon as they were passed. The younger girls were more nervous. The one on my side whimpered a little as I brushed her arm in passing.

Finally, there was a stare-down with a homicidal clown. OK, “homicidal clown” — that may be redundant…on Halloween, anyway.

All in all, I had a great time helping these kids enjoy their night of safe supernatural danger.

No Camera When I Need It

2009-10-25T19:51:00.001-05:00

I was feeling a might poorly today, so I only ventured forth from the hotel for one round of groceries that had to tide me for the whole day. One of the highlights was a Greek restaurant called Zorba’s — aren’t they all? I ordered a lamb shank that was so delicious and tender I have no words for it.

The other highlight was the sunset on the way back to the hotel. I was driving West into the sunset on AZ202. The sky was a little hazy at the level of the mountain tops. The sun peeking between two peaks lit up the haze in a way that made the mountain tops look translucent. I seemed to be seeing the sun through the peaks, not between them.

Simply breathtaking.

Montezuma and Sedona

2009-10-18T23:33:00.010-05:00

This contraption outside Ye Olde UFO Shoppe was so campy we all had to have our picture taken by it. Photo by: Abel L.

Just after I woke up this morning, I got a really nice phone call. Some of the folks I work with wanted to run up to Sedona for the afternoon. That’s just under a hundred miles from where we are. I volunteered to drive.

We grabbed a quick lunch/breakfast at a KFC/A&W combo and headed north.

One of the trainers brought a Garmin GPS system with her. It directed us smoothly through Phoenix and on up to Sedona.

On the way we stopped at Montezuma Castle National Monument – a thousand-plus-year-old settlement that once supported more than 85 people – where I bought a really nice walking stick that I now have to figure out how to get home. It was inhabited for more than 300 years and then mysteriously abandoned. Was it the result of war, drought, or a chupacabra?

After wandering around the settlement, we drove on to Sedona, home of several mystic vortices. We drove to the downtown area, but there were too many tourists to find a parking space. So we drove through town and turned around and headed back.

Then we stopped at a cheesy little group of tourist-trap stores that offered an alien-themed shop and another New Agey one with Kirlian photography to show your aura at $35 a pop. Even my teammate who had been so excited to get her aura photographed balked at the price and the time required. I, however, bought some nice gifts for my loving family. I might not even make them wait until Yule.

The scenery around Sedona is spectacular, and we saw a sunset that was worth the trip. I posted a bunch of pictures on Facebook, and Abel posted some on his MobileMe gallery.

On the trip home, the GPS routed us through the countryside to avoid a 15-mile long construction backup on I-17. I have just been sold on these things.

Hearding the Trainers

2009-10-17T22:56:00.004-05:00

It seems almost criminal to keep such a beautiful instrument imprisioned in glass. I can see protecting paintings and pottery that way, but instruments only live when they are played.

After two weeks of dealing with the inevitable issues that arise from training in a different time zone and on a different shift that I’m used to, I got a chance to do something fun. This opportunity is impressive because I thought this weekend was going to be dedicated to further issue resolution.

Thankfully, one of the other trainers was able to identify the root cause of a significant headache and turn it over to the content owners for resolution. I learned of this relief when we went to have lunch/breakfast at Chino Bandito – an interesting blend of Chinese, Mexican, and Jamaican cuisine. The operative word here is interesting. The six of us each had a different opinion of the experience. I really liked the blend. Others found a dish that was closer to standard Chinese or Mexican fare.

Anyway, that revelation left me with a couple of free hours this afternoon. So one of my compadres and I took off for the Heard Museum.

The Heard Museum collects Native American arts and crafts – from the Inuit to the Yaqui. It has wonderful displays of modern Native artists who integrate their traditional crafts in modern life. I took a bunch of pictures with my iPhone, but I really wish I had brought my Cannon on this trip.

I took several pictures of the collection, some of which are posted on a Facebook album. Unfortunately, I ran out of space on my phone about the time I got to the “Mothers and Daughters” exhibits. This gallery was filled with work in clay by seven women who were part of the same extended family of artists.

There was a really cool room that looked like comic book art. I thought Beccano would like this, so I deleted a couple of other pics and tried to get a decent shot with the iPhone.

First Weekend in Chandler

2009-10-11T03:57:00.003-05:00

You know it was a slow weekend when I post a picture of a hotel bad.

I didn’t do anything this weekend, my first in Chandler, except catch up on my sleep.

Well, I did go out to a brew pub with some of my coworkers. We had a nice dinner and a very good local version of a Black and Tan and then went back to the hotel for a couple more beers around the pool.

My boss and I arrived here last Sunday to help open a new support site. I spent the week trying to get on schedule working the evening shift, roughly 2:00 PM to 1:00 AM. Unfortunately, there is also a two time zone difference. So, instead of getting back to the hotel between 1:30 and 2:00, my body thinks I am getting back at 3:30 to 4:00. And it still wants to get up about 7:00 in its home time zone.

Now I’m wondering if I should just stay up all night when it’s time to go home.

The hotel, a Hampton Inn, is nice – brand new. It only opened a few days before I arrived. I have a nice suite with a HD TV and no HD channels. Why is it that hotels spend the money on the hardware and ignore the service?

We Finally Won One…

2009-09-28T06:36:00.009-05:00

Beccano mallets away at the competition. Aren’t their new uniforms great?

…and didn’t win another one.

The one we won (I’m getting too wrapped up in this homophone, right?) was the football game Friday night. McNeil usually wins all of the out-of-
district games and loses most of the in-district games. This year we started out the opposite way. One of the kids in the stand prophesied that this trend would continue.

I don’t really care. I’m there for the band.

And that brings us to the one we didn’t win. Saturday was the first marching contest of the season—and the only one I’m likely to see. McNeil sounded really good and look pretty good. I thought they had a serious chance, but the judges thought otherwise.

McNeil was the only band that we saw who performed their whole show. That should have counted for something. The other bands had worked on adding flash, but just stood in place for their third movement. We marched the whole damned thing! And sounded good doing it. But apparently flash is more important than knowing your show, and McNeil placed sixth out of a number that resembles a nine but is of lesser value.

Grrr.

Granted, the last three places were determined by only a few hundredths of a point. But still…

So this week, I am grateful to get to hang out with so many dedicated kids who work really hard to put on a show each Friday night. They deserve better than they got.

The Trip Home

2009-09-21T20:07:00.007-05:00

Dad reassures Suna that the AC in his tractor works.

As I mentioned yesterday, we stopped off at Dad’s on the way home. We couldn’t stay as long as I would have liked, but we got to see him and eat some ice cream at DQ.

My favorite part was when he showed off his new tractor to Suna. He gave her a really good tour of the cab. He even started it and let her pretend to drive.

Suna and Beccano enjoyed riding around on the Mule that Chris loaned him. That gave Dad and I a little chance to talk—mostly about nothing. And that is just fine.

This week, I’m grateful to be able to talk to Dad about nothing in particular.

Port Aransas Retreat

2009-09-20T10:45:00.025-05:00

Beccano and Suna Act Touristy

Suna, Beccano, and I took our first “vacation” since we went to North Carolina a couple of years ago. OK. “Vacation” may be a strong word for a weekend retreat to Port Aransas with a group of people from church.

We hadn’t planned on going, but there some kind of harmonic convergence that allowed us to. It started at the game Friday night when we learned that we had a by-week. Then Sunday at church, Janet mentioned that one of the rooms handn’t been taken. Those two things combined with a need to get away and destressify ourselves and then we were on our way.

Suna and I both worked extra hours so that we could take off
early on Friday. We decided to take the interstate to Corpus and the causeway to Port A. We made it to the condo shortly before sunset.

We spent most of Saturday wandering around the area. We started with a couple of walks on the beach taking numerous pictures of the local wildlife. At one point we saw a seabird feeding frenzy. The birds on the horizon we thick enough to be confused for smoke.

Just because it’s pretty. I don’t know what kind of flower it is.

Then we took the ferry to the mainland and wandered around looking at the sites. We got eaten alive by the mosquitoes at the estuary and headed back to the condo and the beach.

Saturday evening was taken up with a pot luck dinner. I improvised a sausage dish with pan fried Kielbasa in sauce of red wine and cheap mustard. It turned out to be delicious, and almost all of it disappeared.

This guy looks serious. You can what I mean by clicking on the image.

Then we went out to the beach again to play with tiny jelly fish that fluoresced when rubbed. These tiny blobs don’t sting, so you can pick them up in your hands. The hardest part was convincing our fellow beachcombers to turn off their flash lights. It seemed counterintuitive that you needed almost complete darkness to see very faint bioluminescence.

A walk this morning, packing our dirty clothes and then we hit the road for home. We saw another instance of the seabird feeding frenzy, this time up close.

Birds

2009-08-31T06:55:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, Suna and Beccano talked me into buying a bird feeder for the front yard. I had put one up in my front yard in Granger and found out that most of the seeds in wild bird food are weed seeds. I had a few birds but a whole yard of thistles.

So I was a little sceptical. I have, after all, worked very hard to beautify the front yard over the last few years. I didn't want a bunch of thistles taking over the flower beds and lawn.

Then I came home from work one day this week to find a dozen birds pecking seeds from the lawn. Another half-dozen tiny birds hanging on the feeder. Of course, they all flew off when I pulled into the driveway.

The next morning a small flock flew away when I opened the front door. As I watered the container garden, I noticed the loudness of the Morning Song around me.

I love the sound of the birds in the morning. For this I am grateful.

The Meaning of Life

2009-08-17T22:37:00.004-05:00

The meaning of life … is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.

— Paulo Coelho. The Alchemist.

More To Be Grateful For

2009-08-17T09:17:00.008-05:00

Beccano in his brother’s dorm residence hall living-learning domicile

Last night Beccano told us that Junior Roundup—the day juniors at McNeil get their schedules and books—was this morning. Both he and Suna said that he had told us previously, and it had slipped all of our minds. So I got up early (for me) this morning to take him by school.

We had a nice talk on the way to school. About half way there, he said, “You know. You don’t have to go in with me. I’m just going to get my books. It shouldn’t take that long since I’m not getting a locker or anything. That’s what takes all the time.” So we planned put where and how I should pick him up when he was done.

I found a parking place in the lee of the PAC and started this blog about how proud I am of this young man. It was just a couple of years ago that he wouldn’t even ask a clerk at a game store about a game he really wanted. Now here he is going into a crowded room to deal with authority figures on his own—not wanting his peers to see him with a parental unit.

It also made me aware of how independent Trackgrease was and how I should have appreciated that more.

I am grateful to have had both of these fine young men in my life. I have learned so much from each of them that my paltry contributions to them are negligible in comparison. Mostly I am grateful to Trackgrease for surviving the vast number of parenting mistakes his mother and I made in raising him. I would do a much better job if I could have a do-over.

Mobile Blogging from here.

RIP: Les Paul

2009-08-17T01:05:00.002-05:00

I think more people will recognize the guitar than a picture of the man.Photo by: his1K

OK. I never was a big fan of Les Paul (June 9, 1915 – August 13, 2009). I only recently discovered how much I like the music he and Mary Ford recorded before I was born. But no one can doubt the influence he had on twentieth century music. Where would rock and roll be without the guitar that bore his name?

Ironically, when The Economist showed up in the mail on Friday, the cover featured an angel playing a Les Paul guitar to promote a feature on why we love music.

Les Paul became an inspiration to me a few years ago when I heard an NPR interview with him. Arthritis had all but taken his hands. He could only use one finger on his left hand consistently, sometimes two. But he kept playing. The bit they played on the radio sounded as good as many four-fingered guitarists and better than most.

How did he deal with the pain? He said, if you want to play, you do what you have to.

Les Paul died last Thursday, but today I am grateful for all that he gave us.

Convocation

2009-08-16T13:52:00.008-05:00

Suna is talking to a neighbor we haven’t seen in a long time. We actually met a lot of people have known or should have known on campus this weekend.

The convocation was held in the gym. All us old folk had to sit in plastic bleachers or folding chairs for an hour or so before the event began— just long enough for ourbutts to go to sleep and our backs to ache.

A brass quintet started a few minutes before the students arrived. They played well, but the gathered families wouldn’t shut up enough to be able to hear the band. Some of us applauded any way.

While we were waiting, we met a nice family I’m San Antonio. We talked of traffic, the drought, and hail storms until the quintet started playing.

Of course, I had to go just before the students marched in, but I got to see Kynan and Nic precess anyway.

Kynan’s roommate and Beccano leaving the brunch.

The convocation itself sounded more Unitarian as it went on. The speech on integrity drove home both why we were today and what has gone wrong in this country since Reagan, maybe even Nixon or Johnson.

Afterward, the kids all gathered outside on a set of bleachers for a panoramic photo. We got a couple of shots or parts of Kynan’s face in the crowd. Then we gave him the last of the stuff from home (at least, until he comes home for the first time). The students still have a full day ahead and a busy week to follow.

Suna, Beccano, and I went home with a brief stop a Piranha Records, where I got a Stone Coyotes CD. Beccano, who inspired the stop, couldn’t find anything he wanted.

Mobile Blogging from here.

Beginnings

2009-08-15T15:15:00.009-05:00

This is the “living learning center” where Tubaboy will live for the next academic year. When I was in college, we called them “dorms.”

Suna and I spent the day on the campus of Southwestern University in Georgetown. The students had their own activities, while parents were ensconced in crowded lectures that either extolled the virtues of the university or encouraged us to let go and empower our fledglings to solve their own problems—a learning method in which I wholeheartedly believe. (That may be the longest sentence I have written in 20+ years.)

For example: we learned the value of shelf liner in the morning session. To be fair, there was also a lot of information repeated from the New Student Day this Spring. But that repetition was needed as the crowd today was much larger than this Spring. Many of the adults hadn’t already been told of the campus police presence. Or of the dedication of the faculty and staff to the betterment of our children.

Suna enjoyed the lemonade they served to keep us from keeling over on a 100º+ cloudless afternoon.

All of the speakers were as polished as you would expect from a highly rated, if small, liberal arts college. Most were even funny, and all seemed sincere and caring. The cynic in me says that’s why they were the ones on stage, but I have also found those qualities in everyone we have met here.

One thing I am certain of is that if Kynan starves here, it’s his own damned fault. The food is plentiful and good, and I don’t believe that is just to impress the parents. It is institutional food—very good institutional food, but still very institutional.

I started this post during the second afternoon session, which was misnamed “Begin with the End in Mind” or something very like that. It was really four students droning about how great Southwestern is now that they have adjusted to college life. Since I have always been turned off by self-proclamations of school spirit (thanks to the fascist traditions of Brazoswood High), I left to read and write for a few minutes.

Mobile Blogging from here.

Life Is Hard But Good

2009-08-10T21:04:00.004-05:00

OK. Suna blogged this one, too. But it’s such a nice picture. Photo by: Jon Montgomery

Well, I’m still not blogging with the consistency that I was earlier this year, but maybe that’s a good thing. Work is good, and it’s been taking most, if not all, of my writing energy lately. So I’ll keep this Grateful Monday short.

This week I’m grateful that our family economics are to the point where both Suna and I can start investing some of our energies outside the home. Tonight, Suna is leading a meeting at church. I cooked a nice sausage dinner—Suna and Beccano picked out the sausage yesterday—and had it ready when Suna got home.

Suna, the boys, and I sat down to dinner and conversation, something else to be grateful for. In spite of the dreadful manipulation of paranoid souls in which the Right continues to engage, I have some hope for the future. With Trackgrease, Tubaboy, and Beccano putting their energies into making the world a better place, how can we fail? Again.

John Deere Green

2009-08-08T23:35:00.000-05:00

Dad sits in his new tractor.

See the album on Facebook.

This was a long Saturday. I started, as usual, by oversleeping. Mom once gave me a plaque for my bedroom door that reads, “There has to be a better way to start out the day than by getting up in the morning.”

Suna had a beading class in the afternoon. So after reviewing the calendar earlier this week, I determined that this would probably be the only weekend this month that I could make the trip down—even a day trip.

Other than just seeing Dad again, I wanted to meet his new tractor. After five years of arguing with him, we were finally able to talk him into the tractor. Not only does he deserve the new tractor, he needs it to be able to stay on the farm and continue working it. He hasn’t had air conditioning in his old tractor for several years. I believe this lack contributed to and worsened his recent health problems.

Chris and Beth were again spending the weekend at the farm. Chris was busy fixing things that, being neither a farmer nor a welder, I had no idea how to fix. He built a couple of new stands for Dads implements. Dad had been propping these implements on rickety collections of scrap lumber and stone.

After lunch, Beth and I drove into Victoria to buy a connector I needed to hook up speakers to the new TV Chris gave Dad a couple of weeks ago. It took much longer than I thought because we made several pointless stops, learning, among other things, that the Radio Shack in Cuero no longer exists and that the Best Buy in Victoria Mall is a dark and scary place.

While we were doing that Dad took a nap and Chris fixed the generator on Dad’s friend Robert’s antique tractor. By the time he got back, I had smoked sausage coming off the grill, and Beth had made another big batch of Grandma’s German sweet rice. Chris was a little miffed that we hadn’t called to rescue him. He spent five hours total for a half-hour’s work.

I headed home about 22:30, glad that I had taken the truck even though I didn’t see any deer on the side of the road. Maybe I should be glad because I didn’t see any deer. You’re more likely to hit the ones you don’t see.

I’m Back

2009-08-04T15:36:00.005-05:00

I’m so glad to have this guy hang around for a little while longer.

I’ve been absent from the blogosphere for a while—neither writing nor doing much in the way of reading. I’m sorry. It’s been a couple of months where life just got in the way. So I thought it appropriate to resume this endeavor with Grateful Monday.

I have so much to be grateful for, and so much has happened since 22 May. I hope to back-post some of what has happened, not that I think anyone is all that interested. I just have a thing for completeness.

So here’s what I am grateful for:

Dad is alive and well. He is going to keep farming for at least another year and has decided to buy a new tractor. All of that has been in question at one time or another since May.
Suna’s position at the company with which she has been contracting seems secure. They may even bring her on as a real employee.
My contract at the Fruit Company will end about a month earlier because I have accepted an offer to work there (albeit in another department) as a real employee. I’m looking forward to getting back into tech support training and working with some old friends.
TrackGrease seems to have gotten married. I don’t think I was officially invited, but I am happy for him. And I’m proud of him. I don’t think I tell him that enough. I know I don’t call enough.
TubaBoy has been getting ready to start his undergraduate education at Southwestern.
Beccano is getting ready for his junior year of high school. He continues to play guitar really well. Getting better all the time.

That’s the short version.

Memorial Day Weekend

2009-05-22T23:21:00.001-05:00

Edwin Starr asked the first question in today’s menu roughly 40 years ago. We’ve been arguing this question for as long as there have been people, and it will probably be argued long after humans have gone extinct.Photo source: B&S Online

Once again, I am posting Food for Thought late—and for the same reason: job business. That’s a good thing.

Since this is Memorial Day weekend, I’ve been thinking about service and sacrifice lately. Not the happiest of thoughts, but sometimes necessary. The first question was written by modern thinker and soul singer Edwin Starr.

Appetizer: War: what is it good for?: In a perfect world, I would agree with Starr’s answer. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. It is occasionally necessary to fight, even to the death. It is not necessary anywhere near as often as we do it. War should be the diplomatic tool of last resort, not of first choice.
Soup: Whom do you honor on Memorial Day?: First, my son. Trackgrease volunteered to serve and stayed in the Reserves for eight years after he left active duty. My brother Edwin was a paratrooper during the Korean conflict. My brother Jim served in the Army during Viet Nam, luckily in Germany. My brother Bill, also served. My uncle Carol was in the Navy during WWII. My father tried to enlist but was turned away because he was unable to turn his wrist to the correct angle to “properly” hold a rifle—never mind that he could light a match with a bullet.; All of these survived their service.
Salad: Has there ever been a draft evader in your family?: My great grandfather came to the United States to avoid serving in the Kaiser’s army. Technically, I was a draft evader for 1o days. The law requiring us to register for the draft expired 10 days after my deadline for registration. A friend of mine went to register a couple of days before my deadline, and they just laughed at him for bothering. So I didn’t bother.
Entré: If so, do you support that decision?: Well, given the fact that I wouldn’t have been here if he had stayed in Germany, the self-serving answer is, “Of course I do!”
Dessert: Why do we continue to go to war?: The reasons for war are too numerous to list, but they always boil down to greed. Sometimes the greed is on both sides. Sometimes, only on one side.; I wish nations would follow the Taoist protocols, which have their parallels in most modern religions:

Music This Weekend

2009-05-20T21:30:00.011-05:00

I don’t have a picture of Rebecca’s recital, but here she is conducting our choir a couple of weeks ago. We are so blessed to have her.Photo by John Phelps

There was a lot of music this weekend, starting with a rehearsal on Saturday morning at the church. Jan, Jo, and I ran through a rather drab piece called “Bittersweet.” J&J are big fans of playing what is written, and swing doesn’t really swing that way. Well, I wouldn’t really call “Bittersweet” swing. It’t more like someone who has never had the blues trying to transcribe a blues piece.

We performed this piece Sunday morning. Nobody died, but it was not my proudest moment as a musician. Luckily, we have a very kind congregation, and many of them were congratulatory. Jan was honest when she said that it had a few “rough spots.”

That afternoon the choir director gave a piano recital. She opened with “French Suite #2” by JS Bach, then moved on to Beethoven. She concluded with a Chopin piano concerto. (I lost the program, so these are mostly guesses based on a failing memory.) Rebbecca played really well and raised a little money for the Bill Sauber Memorial Fund, which supports music infrastructure at the church.

Finally, I went to jam with the new rock band I’m kinda playing with. It was our first practice with a new guitarist after the guy who asked me to join left. The singer was out of town, so the new guitarist and I faked our way through the songs we do. And I have to say we rocked. It was a great time, and I think will shape my mood for the week. I love playing loud and strong music with a deep pocket.

Although I wasn’t that into it at the time, I have come to think of Jailbreak as one of the best rock albums ever. Just driving, good-time music that’s as fun to play as it is to listen to.Photo source: Rock God Cred

If you can play rock music and stand still, you ain’t doing it right. If you do it right, it’s a fun way to get a decent cardiovascular workout.

So that’s what I’m grateful for this week: music, especially rock music. Give me a deep, throbbing bass line and a wall of sound. Give me a good drummer and a strong beat. That makes me too happy to stand still! Like the song says:

Roll me over and turn me around.
Let me keep spinnin’ ’till I hit the ground.
—Phil Lynott & Brian Downey

Makes You Stronger?

2009-05-15T23:27:00.011-05:00

Kevin Sorbo played the title role in the 1990s TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys Photo source: Oak Leaf Collectibles

What doesn’t kill you:
Makes you stronger
Makes you wish it had

This set of questions derives from a comparison Howard Thurman made of humans to jack pines, a tree species that usually requires a forest fire to free its seeds from cones. From the destruction, a new stand of trees arises phoenix-like. So here we go.

Appetizer: What did you think of the Hercules TV series?: The 1960s cartoon series was one of my favorites. I watched it almost every morning before school on Channel 13. The 1990s live action series was OK. Not one of my favorites, but it had the advantage of airing adjacent to Xena: Warrior Princess.
Soup: Are you generally more optimistic or pessimistic?: I vacillate. I believe we have to take the bad with the good, so we might as well get the most out of it. I also believe we need negative experience to appreciate (or even comprehend) positive experience. Life is like a black and white photo; without contrast, everything is indistinguishable. So, I guess I have optimistic tendencies. I believe that everything always works out for the best—even if we can’t see it at the time. Regardless, it all contributes to who we are. If things happened differently, we would be different people.
Salad: Which event in your life made you stronger or a better person for having survived it?: So many to choose from! Each one was incredibly painful and yet shaped who I am today. So, I’ll talk about the death of my brother Bill. It was traumatic for my family. He was younger than I am today, still in his prime. You don’t ever recover from that, but you can assimilate the experience, embrace the pain, and move forward.; Bill’s death shocked me out of my complacency. It freed me from a need to keep climbing the corporate ladder and pursue money and power. Until then I thought that if I just had more, I would be happier. I worked insane hours, and I neglected my family and my own health. There would be time in the future for happiness.; I awoke to the reality of my own mortality. I eventually left the corporate culture that was killing me. I took a job at a university to wind down. It paid barely enough to survive, but it was enough for awhile. A friend once asked me what I had planned for the day. I said I was going to hang out at the lake and then go into work. “Don’t you have chores?” she asked. I nodded. “The lake will be there tomorrow,” she chided. “But I might not be.”; I make more money than I did then, but I believe my work is about more than making money. While I still help big companies make more money, I also help the people who work for them do their jobs better. I know that in some cases, the training I designed has helped people keep their jobs and provide for their families. I have found a balance that I might not have found if my brother’s death hadn’t forced me to reassess what was important to me.
Entré: Given the choice, would you skip it if you had a “do over”?: I would rather have all of my siblings be alive and healthy and with me. I don’t know what the consequences of that might be. Perhaps I would have been the one to go first. I am also really annoyed at myself for writing this question. I don’t believe in “do overs.” We are who we are because of our experiences. Change the experiences and we change who we are.; Still, I miss Bill. And Edwin. And Mom.; Dammit! Now I’m all teary. Human beings aren’t a fire species. We’re just all fucked up, born to suffer. And we try to justify it by saying it makes us better. Even if it does, it still sucks.
Dessert: Does adversity build character or reveal it?: I believe adversity builds character only if the foundation is already there. But I also believe that we can go through our whole lives without knowing what we are capable of if nothing ever tests our mettle. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Are Humans a “Fire Species?”

2009-05-13T23:40:00.001-05:00

The jack pine must be destroyed by fire to reproduce.Photo source: Global Forrest Science

At today’s Men’s Linguistic Society meeting, we focused on another Howard Thurman sermon. This one compared the human spirit to the jack pine of the norther US and Canada. The jack pine is a fire species. It grows in dense stands that are demolished by forest fires. But the fire prepares the soil for a new stand and releases the seeds from the cones. The seeds remain dormant but viable in the cones for years, waiting on a catastrophic fire to release and activate them.

Chuck’s question was, “Will the current economic crisis act as a catalyst to bring about significant improvements in the economic system and prepare the soil for a new stand of sustainable prosperity?” We were divided in our opinions. Some were optimistic, others cynical. I sat firmly on the fence.

I believe we will devise new safeguards for the economy to prevent this crisis from recurring from the same causes. If we survive, the economy will be leaner and stronger, and, perhaps, it will be driven by something other than consumption, which (like the disease) eventually consumes its host.

On the other hand, I also believe that humans cannot devise a system that humans cannot corrupt. As Benjamin Franklin said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” The price of economic security is balancing between freedom and regulation. Too much of either is a dangerous thing.

Thanks, Dad

2009-05-11T21:47:00.003-05:00

Dad at Texas Roadhouse

This week’s Grateful Monday is short. I’m grateful to have my dad hanging around, farming, and generally being obnoxious at 86. It may not be all that unusual for someone in their 50s to still enjoy the company of their parents, but consider that Dad and Mom were both in their mid-30s when I was born.

I lost Mom almost a decade ago. I want Dad to be around for a long, long time. I’m greedy that way.

Movie Review: Star Trek (2009)

2009-05-10T23:06:00.004-05:00

Black holes and planets don’t mix.

Photo source: Star Trek

We all went to see the new Star Trek movie last night. Suna and I both approached it as Trekkies from the sixties. That is, we were optimistic but ready to be disappointed, especially after the last few movies. TubaBoy was seeing for the second time in two nights. Beccano seemed eager to see it for the first time.

I was not disappointed. The movie was a success on all accounts. The least entertaining point was the long expository sequence where Spock recounts the events leading up to the history-changing battle that opens the movie. Other than that, it certainly did not seem as if we were in the theater anywhere near as long as we were. We even watched the credits for a while—something we almost never do.

I used the phrase “history-changing” rather than “historic” or “history-making” for a reason. The movie has been called a “reset.” It’s like when we were kids. It’s a “do over” more than a remake.

Forget any current theories of black holes or wormholes. Science is not one of the strengths of this movie. Hopefully, that will come back in future installments.

Using a fourth-grader’s understanding of physics, Director J.J. Abrams wipes the slate clean and allows these young actors to reshape our favorite characters in their own ways. None of the events that shaped the characters we have cherished for decades ever happened except in some alternate history, as Uhura noted.

Abram walked a tightrope with this movie. While remaining true to the spirit of the original, he set the stage for a new new generation—or is that a new first generation?—to go boldly where no human has gone before, again. It will be interesting to see where they go.

Mother’s Day, Birds, and Flowers

2009-05-10T15:41:00.004-05:00

Dad’s newest calf

We got up early (for us, late for Dad) this morning and drove into town for donuts and coffee—the most nutritious of all breakfasts. We sat around the Donut Palace, watching the head server call out people’s orders to them as they came through the door and wondering how cool/boring it must be to know everyone in town that well.

After breakfast as we trolled the streets of Yorktown trying to figure out what to do next, we came upon Uncle Carol working in his yard. So we stopped and bothered him and Aunt Kathy for awhile.

We mostly sat in the back yard talking and petting the neighborhood dog, but we were really bird watching. They have a bird feeder built to look like an Old West hotel and painted with Bed and Breakfast. Even the tiniest birds couldn't fit inside to see if there was a bed, but they all seemed to enjoy their breakfast. Among the visitors to the feeder were:

Suna sits in a field of wild flowers at the intersection of US-87 and FM1116.

White winged doves
Mexican doves (with red under their wings)
Cardinals
A yellow-headed woodpecker

Then we drove around the countryside talking about nothing. Back at the farm, we walked around—looking at the flowers and cows, mostly just enjoying being outside together.

Too soon, it was time to leave. We took the scenic route home so we could enjoy the wild flowers running amock across the countryside. Dad said there weren’t to many around his place, but we found them. I think he just looks for other things and misses the beauty around him. We found one spectacular field at the intersection of US87 and FM1116.

Dad's Birthday a Day Late

2009-05-09T22:24:00.002-05:00

Dad at his farm

Yesterday was Dad’s 86th birthday. I called to wish him the best, but I couldn’t get ahold of him because he was out looking at the full moon. I knew it was a full moon, and I knew he does that. So I had asked Sweetness to let him know Suna and I would make the trek to see him today. She had shipped him a bunch of candy and was going to keep calling until he answered.

This morning we headed out. We arrived to find him napping with his cows. We talked awhile, played him the CD of the church choir singing the Schubert Mass in G, then drove him into Victoria for a birthday bash at Texas Roadhouse. He ate almost all of his catfish.

After “supper” [dinner for most of us], we stopped in to visit some old friends from church who up and moved to Victoria last year. We all had a good time.

Back at the farm, we watch the moonrise. Then we talked until well past Dad’s bedtime.

Photos and copy editing to come later.

5/10/2009 Update: Added picture and edited.

Food for Thought #12: 100 Days

2009-05-08T17:44:00.006-05:00

Barack Obama:
Not on His 100^th Day in Office

Photo source: Macrobuddies

Sorry I haven’t posted for awhile and fallen down on my weekly Food for Thought obligations. I’ve been on deadline at work. Something about writing for 10-12 hours a day greatly reduces the inclination to blog.

So in my absences, I missed commenting on the great press hoopla over Barack Obama’s 100^th day in office. Not being one to pay that much attention to time except when someone makes me, today’s FFT celebrates that occassion a little late. It derives from a question Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times now famously asked the President.

Appetizer: During the last 100 days, what most surprised you?: How well the church choir pulled of Franz Schubert’s Mass in G. Even the morning of the performance, we sounded flat (dynamics, not pitch). But when we sang for real, there was some kind of magic transformation. We sounded bigger and better than we actually are.
Soup: What most befuddled you?: I don’t know for sure, but I sure seem to have been fuddled. My brain seemed clouded most of the time, as if it were operating at 75% efficiency or something. Lack of sleep contributed, but I’m sure that wasn’t the whole problem.
Salad: What most uplifted you?: Seeing how happy TrackGrease and his beloved looked in pictures of their wedding.
Entré: What most troubled you?: The crisis mentality that sprung up around my project as the deadline neared. Really, the project made things easier. Was the crisis just so that we could solve it?
Dessert: What most enchanted you?: All the pictures of puppies that Suna keeps showing me.

Cherry

2009-04-13T21:15:00.006-05:00

Me and My Victory

Photo by: Karl P.

I said I would post pictures of my new bike, whom Suna has named Cherry. One of my uber-conservative friends snapped the picture this weekend when I stopped by his house.

I had to ride the bike through gusty winds on an overpass today. The crosswinds were almost unnoticeable. The bike cut through them with little or no effort.

So far, I only have two complaints:

It is belt, not shaft, driven.
The shifter is toe-only. (I got spoiled to a heal shifter on the VTX.)

Now I promise I’ll stop going on and on about the bike.

So that brings me to what I am grateful for this week, and it’s not the bike. This week I am grateful again for Suna. She encouraged me to get the bike even though she generally dislikes them. She then blogged nice things about the bike, even making it her Wednesday Wonder! She makes me happy in thousands of little ways, just by being the nice person she is. Thanks for being so nice to me.

Food for Thought #11: Acceptance

2009-04-10T23:45:00.006-05:00

OK. This image is kinda the opposite of acceptance. But how important is acceptance?

Image source: Gritty Art

I am posting this week’s “Food for Thought” a little late, but then I’ve been late with all my posts this week.

This week’s idea stems from the Men’s Linguistic Society meeting. Some of the men from church get together once a month for lunch and a friendly discussion. Usually Rev. Chuck reads a passage from one religious leader or another to get the discussion going. This time he read a passage from Howard Thurman who postulated that everyone requires some form of acceptance and the acceptance and God’s acceptance is the ultimate.

Being good UUs, we first had to decide what the word acceptance meant. We did not try to find consensus on the meaning of God. That would not have been possible in the amount of time we had, namely a single lifetime.

So here is today’s menu. The code for the questions appears in the first comment.

Appetizer: How important is it for you to attain the approval of others?: At this point in my life, the acceptance of others is both more and less important to me than it once was. With life experience, I believe we grow less reliant on others to determine our own self-worth. I agree with Thurman’s initial point in that there is always someone whose opinion matters beyond our own self-image, someone or some group whose acceptance is critical in forming our own self-esteem. It is just that with age, we become more and more selective in whose opinions we choose to value that strongly.
Soup: Do you seek everyones approval the approval of a select few or not really give a damn?: I am more self-reliant as regards my self-esteem than when I was younger. I care less about the opions of most people. At the same time, a few people matter extremely to me.
Salad: Whose approval is most important?: Suna’s, distantly followed by my family’s and a few friends.
Entré: Whose is least?: Just about everyone else’s
Dessert: How important is it to attain you boss’ approval?: Much less than it once was. I think that as we get older, especially given some of the work experience I have had, I invest less in the opinions of my boss than I once did. I recently had a contract with someone who was an abuser. Her opinion mattered only in that I kept working, but not so much that. I think had that person offered me a permanent job, I would have declined. I know my value as a contributor. If someone else can’t see that or tries to undermine it, I know I can find a better match elsewhere in the market.

Victory

2009-04-09T19:56:00.004-05:00

Victory Vision Tour

Photo source: Victory: The New American Motorcycle

I bought a new motorcycle this week. Just earlier this year, I was thinking about selling my bike and giving it up, but now I’m glad I didn’t.

I looked at Harleys last year, but I couldn’t make myself turn loose of the money for one. Again. When I bought my original Honda VTX 1800r, I bought it because it was so much more motorcycle for the money than a Harley. This year, I didn’t even look at a Harley. I know what they look like. They haven’t changed.

I wasn’t even going to buy a bike. I had decided to keep my old one another year or two, and took it in for new tires and a state inspection sticker. I was fed up with the larger dealerships, so I took it to the Victory dealership near the church. That was a big mistake, at least so far as my wallet is concerned.

You can’t go to a dealership without looking around. It’s like eating one potato chip or stepping on the same piece of water twice. It just can’t be done. So I looked.

And I saw the most beautiful motorcycle I have ever seen in my life. I made myself leave it alone. Suna and I stopped by on Saturday to see if my bike was ready. It wasn’t, but she got a look at the bike, to. She said, “You can park that in front of my house! It’s so pretty I might even get on it.”

Monday, I called the dealership and asked the to prepare an estimate for trading in my old bike on the new one. I test drove the demo and fell in love with the bike all over again. It’s as if it were made for my body. It’s powerful and big, but it still has a low center of gravity. It turns like a dream.

We came to terms, and I picked it up on Tuesday. I’ve been driving it for a couple of days now, and I just get more impressed. I was buffeted by strong side winds going over an overpass on my way home from choir practice Wednesday night. I would have had to wrestle my old bike under those conditions. The Vision just shrugged them off as its aerodynamics seemed to adjust the bike to the turbulence automatically.

Have I mentioned how good it sounds? Not too loud, it has a deep, throaty rumble than Suna calls manly. It is the perfect motorcycle.

Bruuuuuuce, Tooooooo!

2009-04-07T21:28:00.002-05:00

OK. It’s really Bruce!

Photo source: Carnage and Culture

OK. At Tim’s request I’ll talk a little about the actual performance. It was simply awesome. BS pulled off moves at sixty that would have hospitalized me at thirty.

High energy and stiff, he was still able to pull off the move where he leans over backwards with his feet flat on the stage and the mic stand protruding from his crotch in a weird phallic symbol. His back was perfectly parallel to the stage, about a foot above the stage supported only by holding onto the mic stand. That part was physically amazing.

For the rest of it, what can I say. It was Bruce. The concert started an hour late and lasted almost three hours. The break for the intermission lasted less than five minutes. The encore comprised at least five songs, including two sign requests after Bruce said his final goodnight. Of course, the band didn’t know all of the songs; Bruce has too many.

The most bizarre part was when he took a sign request that was written on two gum wrappers. He held the wrappers to the camera so that the audience could see “Sherry BabyDarling” on the monitors. He then ate the wrappers and played the song, even though I have been told it was only the second time he had every performed it in concert. (I doubt that because he remembered all the words, but you never know. He is a smart man.)

Bruuuuuuuuce!

2009-04-06T21:51:00.009-05:00

We went to see Rambo last night!

Photo source: Online Tickets USA

We went to see the Springsteen show last night courtesy of good friends. The show distracted the geek in me. There were around 11 people on stage, most of them with an instrument and all of them with at least one mic—and not a cord to be seen.

When I look at wireless mics, they have an A/B switch—two channels to choose from. Springsteen can obviously afford better equipment, but I didn’t even know that you could have 22+ wireless devices on the same stage. That lead us to joke at work that they were using 802.11BRUCE technology.

Another thing that distracted me during the show was the sheer number of support staff: dozens of roadies, a hand full of guitar technicians, engineers, camera techs, and so on. Then there were literally tons of speakers, hundreds of amps, stage-mounted TV cameras, handy cams, floor cams, at least three boards…. Based on the ticket price and the number of people, the gate had to run between $300-600 thousand. And I couldn’t help but wonder if the boss broke even on the show.

So this week I am grateful for good friends who are willing to share the music.

Oh! And I like Duffy, too.

A Day in the Wilds

2009-04-04T22:56:00.002-05:00

This bee was having a good time on what Suna tells me is ice flower. The larger version on Flickr would make a nice desktop.

Calling Central Texas is a bit of an exaggeration. Would you believe a big exaggeration? All right, it’s an outright lie.

Suna wanted to go for a ride today. Her main objective was Old Oaks Ranch, a place where they raise their own alpacas and make their own yarn. It has a yarn shop (no big surprise there), and they give lessons. We watched a woman show how to turn a pile of raw alpaca fur into a felt fedora. I placed some pictures of the alpacas and other pictures of the ice flowers with bees in a Facebook album.

Then we went to Wimberly, which has become something of a tourist trap of late, in search of a guitar shop that seems to no longer exist. Wimberly is a town that was built to hold about a thousand people. Probably two-to-three times that number are there at any given moment on a weekend.

Finally, we went on our lovely drive through the hills. We didn’t take any pictures of the route, just enjoyed the vistas and wild flowers.

We wrapped up the date with dinner at the new Monument Cafe in Georgetown. The food is as good as ever, and they have expanded the seating. The exterior of the building looks exactly the same as the old one. One interesting design choice: instead of men’s and women’s restrooms, they have a series of large private restrooms. While nice, I don’t see how this choice can do anything other than raise operating costs. I would rather they worked on keeping the prices reasonable than try to become some hoity-toity spa-like thing.

Food for Thought #10: X-Men in Your Life

2009-04-03T07:09:00.004-05:00

Me trying to walk around at work

Photo source: Comic Vine

This week’s menu stems from the fact that I am always getting shocked at work. It seems I can’t touch a metal object without hollering in pain and surprise. That led Douglas to say, “It’s like your super power. You could wipe out technology all around you.”

And I’m apparently not alone in this talent. The Office Scribe blogged about a similar problem back in February.

If you’re not into X-Men, feel free to use whichever superhero mythos you like.

Appetizer: What is your X-Men name?: Static. I didn’t know it at the time, but there is an X-Man named Static. But in our conversation at work, we made up our own characteristics for the character. (I’m the wrong gender for the original, anyway.) There is also a later character named Static in some other mythos (the illustration for this post).
Soup: What is your super power?: I can deliver an EMP that takes out all electronic devices around me. So I can’t drive a car newer than something like a Nash Rambler. OK. So I could drive something as late as—maybe—the 1970s.
Salad: Are you good, evil, neutral, or chaotic?: With a name like Static, I’d have to be chaotic or evil. Evil is kinda blasé, don’t you think? It’s so Bush. So I’m chaotic. That’s more in keeping with my real nature anyway.
Entré: What is the first thing you would do with your new super power?: I don’t know. Crash a server somewhere? Cause a getaway car to stall?
Dessert: Who is your nemesis?: Rain? Since water discharges electricity. Or maybe Rain would be my compadre who make me stronger—like lightening. But then I would be Storm.

Happy Birthday, Mom

2009-03-30T11:28:00.000-05:00

Mom and Dad (when he had hair)

Photo by Olan Mills

Today would have been my mother’s 89^th birthday. She lived a long and difficult life, but she always kept her sense of humor. I remember her making the ICU staff laugh just days before she died. She always had a kind word and a smile, no matter what.

Dad was, Mom’s third (at least) husband. I don’t know because she didn’t talk much about her past until the end. She was too busy looking ahead. So I only knew of one other when I was growing up.

Mom and Dad were married more than 40 years. Dad was disappointed that they didn’t make 50. She said he was the best thing that ever happened to her.

So today I am grateful for the years Mom and Dad had together. I’m also grateful for what she taught me about the healing power of humor.

Just Workin’

2009-03-24T20:53:00.003-05:00

This week I am grateful to be working to much to do much blogging. Writing under an accelerated deadline saps my writing creativity this week.

Diffusion and Diversity

2009-03-21T23:41:00.006-05:00

This red rose is one of the success stories of building the side yard bed last year.

I may ramble a bit today, because I’m not really focused on what I want to say. It was a nice day of catching up on chores, watching TV, and recuperating from the stresses of the work week. Suna and I went to a party this evening while the boys went to eat pizza and listen to Jeff play.

I didn’t do much in the garden today, except to enjoy its progress. Suna and I sat on the front patio for a little while watching the wrens and other neighbors. The wildflower garden is making good progress, but the shade garden is having problems. The ginger, which looked for awhile as if it might wilt, seems to be making a comeback. But many of the coleuses, which seemed to be flourishing, have turned to mush. Still, I’d rather replace a dozen plants that cost a couple of bucks than one that cost nearly forty.

Then I made salsa for the party. G & R have a beautiful house near the church, and many of the people I only know passingly from church were there. It was refreshing to see Republicans mingling with gay people instead of bashing them. I had a nice long conversation with two of the most right-wing members of the church while enjoying the sunset on a deck that was probably ten feet above a back yard that falls away rapidly toward a greenspace. I was impressed with the house, its appointments, and color scheme. And it was a pleasant evening getting to know people better.

Food for Thought #9: Theoretically Speaking

2009-03-20T13:19:00.004-05:00

The irony is different today than when Hugo Rheinhold first sculpted this statue in the 1890s.

Photo Source: Wikipedia

This week, a Texas legislator introduced a bill to allow a Bible institute to offer a Master’s degree in science education without obtaining certification from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. “Why are people who call themselves scientists afraid to hear two sides of a debate?” complained Representative Leo Berman (R-Tyler). Berman introduced his bill after The Institute for Creation Research was denied authority to offer the degree last year.

So that brings me to this week’s menu:

Appetizer: What did you have for breakfast this morning?

A delicious Slimfast bar, Oatmeal Resin. Got to watch my figure!

Soup: Phish or Monkees?

I love the original Monkees, especially their cover of Neil Diamond’s “I’m a Believer.” Phish reminds me of the Grateful Dead: long, rambling, and loose, but the Dead had better vocals.

Salad: What is your first reaction when you hear the phrase, “I don’t believe in evolution”?

—I don’t believe in you, either.” Evolution, like gravity, is not subject to belief or disbelief; it is. We have demonstrable proof that species evolve. We don’t even have to look at the geological record. Species change over centuries, sometimes within a short time than that.

The questions that remain unanswered are:

Why did the process start?
What does it mean?
Where will it go?

Entré: What do you think about attempts to legislate science or even just how science is taught?

We know what happened when the Soviet Union tried to legislate crops to grow during a drought. As a wise man—I won’t say who to avoid displaying my overt geekiness—once said, “Ya canno’ change the laws of physics!”

Similarly, if we pass a law that requires we teach that light travels in a spiral, it won’t mean that kid who learn that will be able to see around corners. All it would accomplish is to prevent those kids from being able to understand how lasers, and therefore CD players, work.

Dessert: Has the word “theory” been stripped of its scientific meaning or become loaded with excess emotional baggage?

I think so. One of the arguments the Luddites make is that we should teach creationism along side evolution because they are both theories. But they are not. Evolution is a theory in that it is backed by empirical research that can be reproduced by anyone willing to do the work. Creationism is a myth backed by a book written long, long ago. Attempts to wrap it in the scientific mantle disrespect the basic tenets both science and Christianity.

That is just one example of how the meaning of “theory” has become degraded.

Library Thing

2009-03-16T21:02:00.004-05:00

I know there’s supposed to be an illustration here, but like I said, I’m tired. And apathetic. Would something random be better than nothing?

Well, this was a horrible week in the news. Many of my friends lost jobs last week, and today wasn’t any better. It turns out that AIG paid—perhaps was legally required to pay—hundreds of millions of dollars to the people who raped the economy. President Obama is so angry about that, he said he was choking. The Dow didn’t make five consecutive days on the positive side, even though it would have been the first time in recent memory.

But Suna is getting interviews before her contract ends, and my dad said a well near our property hit gas. My job continues. So, all things considered, I have a lot to be grateful for today. Picking one thing for the week is a challenge, but I’ll give it a go.

This week I’m going to be grateful for my online book community, Library Thing—not what you expected after the economics intro, but what the hell; I’m tired. They published a cool screen saver for the Mac this week and are trying to get one together for Windows. They have given me intelligent acquaintances all over the world who share my love affair with the printed word—especially if you count online media, however volatile. They power my church library and my personal library online. They provide much of the book and author content I link to from this blog.

I’m making a committment to upload higher resolution book covers for the community than they can get from Spamazon.

Pop?

2009-03-15T10:35:00.003-05:00

I didn’t have my camera with me, but the sign looked like this one—except that it had a blue background. At least this one’s in Austin, too.

Photo source: rutlo

This morning on the way to church, I saw a new billboard. It featured the new Pepsi logo as the “O” in the word “POP.”

Why am I commenting on this sign? Well, this is Texas. I’ll come back to this later.

The purpose of advertising is to arouse a desire to purchase the product. This sign attempts to arouse desire by equating the Pepsi brand with the product through being included in a community through the common use of pop.

The problem is that using the word pop in Texas defines you as an outsider. Pop is a sound, not something you drink—unless you’re from someplace else. Native Texans say “soda,” “sodawater,” or (despite litigation) the generic use of the trademark of Pepsi’s chief competitor. (Notice the careful circumlocution!)

So this sign is a classic example of a major corporation and its advertising agency not bothering to understand its target audience.

The tinfoil hatters might say this is part of a greater conspiracy to further homogenize our culture. But I agree with the wise words a friend once told me. “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.” Unfortunately, I don’t know who first offered that advice.

Let’s hope our corporate leaders get a clue before all of our jobs move elsewhere.

Food for Thought #8: Mentoring

2009-03-13T08:23:00.007-05:00

Stephen King is another of my long-distance mentors. Reading his book On Writing is like having a long, personal conversation with a master and being able to revisit parts of the conversation as you choose.

Photo source: Twilight Blog

Everyone is a mentor, and everyone has at least one mentor who has helped defined the guiding principles of their lives. (Ignore the numeric disagreement between noun and pronoun. It’s a symptom of my current contract where that disagreement has been institutionalized in the style guide.) Mentoring can be anything from helping a friend with homework to providing life-changing guidance.

Appetizer: Do you view yourself as a mentor? Why or why not?: Yes. It’s in my job description. Part of my job is to develop young trainers and instructional designers without being directly responsible for them. It’s like having the fun parts of a management job without the icky parts.
Soup: Other than your parents, who was most influential in shaping the choices you made in your life?: I guess there were really so many people, really. Here are two:; First was Louis Taylor, the stepfather of two of my best friends in high school. Louis was stable, impossible to rile, and funny with a very dry humor. I never realized how much he influenced me until his funeral. Then it was too late to say thanks to him, but his wife appreciated it when I told her.; Second, there is Robert Heinlein. Now I never met the man, and I doubt he would have given me the time of day. I was anti-war and against the military/industrial complex—you might say the anti-Heinlein. So, how could he be my mentor? I read all of his books, many of them more than once. His values regarding service, self-reliance, and intelligence permeate his writing. Some of my earliest concepts of spirituality, self-worth, and discipline could be described as “Heinlein quotes.” To this day, I find he influences me, and I know he influenced Trackgrease. Anyone who know the word grok knows what I mean.
Salad: Other than your children or siblings, whose life have you influenced most?: I really don’t know. I’ve tried to lead by example and to be open to question. I’m sure I have, but I don’t want to grab the credit for anyone else’s achievement (or the blame if they followed my lead and it didn’t work out for them).
Entré: What is your favorite experience as a mentor or mentee?: I love “watching the lights come on.” I get a real thrill watching someone wrestle with a concept or problem and find their own solution.
Dessert: Do you have to know someone personally for that person to be your mentor? Please explain your position.: Since I claimed Robert Heinlein as a mentor, no, I don’t. I think all writers are mentors of people they don’t know, especially if they take the time to answer their fan mail. Teachers are also mentors. And although they usually know their mentees at least causally, they may not. Trainers in industry don’t always have the luxury of knowing the people they train, sometime hundreds at a time. Neither to university professors. But in the end, mentoring is a relationship. It works best when you can have a cup of coffee—or an occassional beer—together.

Pick of the Picks

2009-03-11T22:58:00.007-05:00

Beccano gave me this super-awesome guitar pick made from a peso. I’m told it is like the one Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top uses. The shape is perfect, and it plays with surprising speed and accuracy.

Check it out at Peso Picks.

Still More Music

2009-03-09T23:34:00.002-05:00

I didn't get any pictures of the kids at church, so I'm recycling a picture from the Triskelion gig last month

Sunday was the annual youth service at church. It was all positive, focusing on service at all levels but starting with random acts of kindness. There were fewer partially thought-through ideas than last year, but the best part was the music. A cover of imagine made Suna get all weepy. There were a few other really good songs, too.

So this week am again grateful for music and for the passing of the torch. I find that music is in good hands with this next generation. I just wish I knew how to mentor them better. But to do that, I would have had to have accomplished something with my music. Maybe it’s not too late for that. Probably, but maybe not.

JT and the Quartertones

2009-03-08T01:26:00.002-06:00

Suna dances and says, “Let’s go listen to some music!” in her new nearly-completed sweater.

Tonight is the midpoint between Suna’s birthday and mine. To celebrate, we went to see Jeff’s new band play at cafe segovia. I guess they spell it in all lower case in a misguided attempt to be trendy.

To me there is nothing trendy about good food, and the food there is superlative. It is Spanish rather than Mexican or TexMex. Suna and Parker had a beef stew seasoned with a hint of cinnamon. I had a suckling pig that was cooked to succulent moistness if a little under seasoned. I guess the chef wanted to let the natural flavor of the little piggy carry the day, and it was almost up to the task. Beccano had a rib eye, which he consumed in it’s entirety.

But the culinary star of the evening was the vegetables. They were fresh and crisp. They were also seasoned to perfection. I have never eaten veggies before that I preferred to a tasty entré. Mmmmmmmmm.

I said culinary star because Suna chose the restaurant because of the entertainment. Jeff’s new band had their debut performance. I’ve heard Jeff play around the house, so I knew he is a hot picker. I’ve heard him at a couple of singer songwriter gigs, including our wedding, so I knew he could fulfill both halves of that category. But this was the first time I’ve heard him rock.

The band did a mix of classic covers and originals. My favorite of the first set was a long medley based on “Pretty Woman.&rquo; Parker on Beccano both enjoyed “Sultans of Swing.” And I liked the originals, too.

We didn’t get to stay for the second set because we had to get the kids home. That was disappointing, but it was also a good excuse to drag this tired old butt to bed.

Go see JT and the Quartertones play at a venue near you if you get the chance.

Coleus Garden

2009-03-07T11:50:00.005-06:00

A variegated ginger, several coleus, and some hypoestes—more images on Facebook

I decided to plant a bunch of coleus in the shade garden I built last fall. The shade garden is on the west-y side of the house. It is shaded by our house, the neighbor’s house and the huge oak that attacks the house and will eventually have to come down. When that happens, the fence will still provide shade from that direction.

So Suna and I made a trek to Round Rock Gardens today to stock up on all the varieties of coleus the have in stock.

Black Dragon (I think we got one of these to overwinter, too.)
Festive Dance
Oxblood
Wizard Jade
Wizard Scarlet

The wildflower bed is filling in nicely.

To that I added the plants we got to overwinter in the kitchen window. Sometime I want to build a greenhouse so we don’t have to keep replacing these wonderful shade-and-heat-tolerant plants.

Suna had the great idea to anchor the beds with some Ginger. The stripey leaves go well with the coleus, and all the colors complement.She also suggested planting the Hypoestes at the front of the beds. I chose the Rose Splash^TM Select variety with pink in the leaves because it’s was between the red and white in the coleus.

The shade garden also smells very good. Part of the bark mulch came from shredding our Yule tree.

Food for Thought #7: Weekend Edition

2009-03-06T14:32:00.005-06:00

Photo source: WGTE

Maybe I’ve been asking questions that are too tough lately. I wanted to provoke thoughtful answers, but I also want my readers to be happy and participate. So this week, I’m lightening things up a tad. I’ll put off asking the hard questions a while, even given the example of our previous administration.

Here’s this week’s menu:

Appetizer: When it comes to the weekend, do they usually measure up to your expectations?: Yes, because I try to set such low expectations. If I get a couple of things done around the house and have a couple of nice dinners with the family, I’m happy.
Soup: What good thing happened this week that you were not expecting?: When I wrote this question earlier this week, I didn’t think it would be such a stumper. I think I’m going to have to go with the Dixieland-ish performance at FRED. It was more fun than I expected, and we didn’t suck nearly as bad as I had feared. The audience seemed appreciative. Suna and I even were treated to some very good crockpot “bar-b-que.”
Salad: If one end of a scale is, “I like to have every second of my day planned and executed according to that plan” and the other end is “I like to take life as it comes, completely spontaneously,” where do you fit?: I’m somewhere in the middde. I like to have a plan, but I don’t panic if the plan falls apart. I also like to have some degree of spontaneity in my life. I would like to be able to wake up one Saturday morning and say, “Let’s go to Fredericksburg today and buy peaches”—then do it.
Entré: Do things just happen, or do we control what happens in our lives?: I tend to have an internal locus of control. I am more likely to believe I have some degree of control not only over what happens to me but, more specifically, how I react to it. This belief is at the core of my practice of focused intent and controlled folly. Still, there are things that happen that are beyond my ability to control, or sometimes even understand.
Dessert: What are your plans, if any, for the weekend.: Suna and I are planning to have a nice birthday dinner. This weekend falls between our birthdays. I also hope to get a shade garden planted in front of the fence on the right side of the house. Then there is a benefit for a musician friend of ours who had all of his equipment stolen from his truck.

Sunset and Concert

2009-03-02T22:12:00.005-06:00

Beccano enjoys an awesome sunset.

Tonight, Beccano pointed out the most awesome sunset, but I didn’t get the camera out in time to get the best pictures. The three of us walked around outside appreciating nature at her prettiest. Beccano danced in the street—literally.

Then we went to Junior’s in downtown Round Rock to hear a band that features Parker’s dad’s guitar teacher. They did a short set outdoors in the cold. I wish I had found out their name. Sigh.

I really enjoyed the R&B stuff they did, once they turned down the vocalist’s mic enough that he hardly clipped at all. He had a good voice when the PA wasn’t cutting out.

The guitar player was very good at his style, but the cold interfered with his playing a bit. He was really good at making his mistakes look and sound intentional.

The bass player was rock solid and had a good sound. He played a Schecter 5-string that played really nice. The neck was not humongous as the Fender’s I’ve played. And the body was very light.

But my favorite was the keyboard player. She was awesome—clean, fast, and funky. I wish I knew enough about playing keys to describe it better.

Weekend Update—Not SNL

2009-03-02T13:51:00.006-06:00

Buddy and Rose often have head-on collisions at the doggy door.

I got to work in the garden a bit this weekend. I also had some time to myself. I tremendously enjoyed both.

Then yesterday, I played in the Dixieland-ish band at church, and the people seemed to genuinely enjoy it. We stayed late for a Music Committee meeting, which I think went really well.

Last night, I put together a cheap stand so the bird can move up to the media room and rejoin the family. I’ve missed that bird since we started using our portables in the media room so I could transform the old office into a music room. (That hasn't even really got started yet, but it will.)

As I was walking around campus today, I saw a fat pigeon go after a bug only to get picked off by a hawk. I wondered if the insect were aware of the pigeon’s fate, would it see the incident as divine intervention or a lucky coincidence.

So that is what I am grateful for this week: life in all its permutations, varieties, and plot twists.

Life is what we make it. Let’s choose to make it good.

Gardening Update

2009-03-01T21:59:00.006-06:00

Suna made this on her desktop image.

I wanted to catch up on the state of the garden this first day of March. Here is a teaser. I put more pictures up in a Facebook album.

The blue pansies to the right are in the front bed. I took the picture by holding the camera at ground level and snapping. Thank goodness for autofocus.

The flowers to the left are some of the wildflowers I planted last Fall. This patch did better than the others, some of which never came up at all. Hopefully, this one will fill ne more next year.

Fifth Picture Meme

2009-02-27T21:25:00.009-06:00

“Elect John Oliver for ‘Your Commissioner’”

I already did a version of this meme on Facebook, but Dragonfly tagged me with a slightly different variant—sorta like having two different types of flu, I guess.

Anyway: fifth folder, fifth picture. Since I have many, many folders, I just kept recursing the fifth folder portion of the instructions until I found pictures. Then I took the fifth picture I hadn’t already posted, which turned out to be the sixth one. So in my math, (3 • 5) + 5 = 6.

Suna and I had gone to see my Dad last year. We stopped for gas or something and I started laughing as soon as I got out of the car. John Oliver is one of my favorite commentators on The Daily Show, and there he was running for commissioner in DeWitt County, Texas.

I love the fact that he has “Elect John Oliver For” professionally printed, and then he hand writes “Your Commissioner.” It’s like he can run for anything on a moment’s notice.

Food for Thought #6

2009-02-27T00:47:00.007-06:00

Michael Dowd stands by his evolution machine, the motor home in which he and his brilliant partner travel the country preaching the reconciliation of religion and science. I have never understood the conflict, myself.

Photo source The Great Story

Suna and I went to see Michael Dowd’s lecture Thank God for Evolution last Tuesday. She had a wonderful post in her blog about it, and I decided not to post a redundant one here. And while Dowd didn’t really say anything I hadn’t already thought through, that lecture got me thinking about the long-standing argument over nature versus nurture. (And I bought his book.)

Appetizer: Read the appetizer in full before acting. Focus on this screen. Then close your eyes and turn your head to the right. What is the first thing your eyes focus on when you open them?: The little clock and electronic picture frame that Suna gave me for Yule. (I’m at the office doing this on lunch on Friday—not ahead of time like I usually do. Busy week!)
Soup: When something good happens to someone you work with, how do you react?: Honestly, it depends. If it happens to someone I like and care about, I’m happy for them, no matter what. If it happens to someone I don’t like, I wonder at the injustice of the world because if I don’t like them, I usually thought they were unproductive mooks before I decided I didn’t like them.
Salad: If something happened in your career that doubled your income, what is the first thing you would do?: Tell Suna. Then I’d pay off things. Then I would stimulate the economy with a massive celebration—OK, I’d take a few friends out to dinner at a reasonable restaurant.
Entré: How do we acquire our drives, the parts of us that make us want to accomplish one thing versus another thing?: This answer proves me to be a true moderate. I think what drives us comes in almost equal parts from our heredity (musical talent, for example) and our experience. I have known overbearing stage parents who completely killed any musical appreciation in their very talented offspring. I once heard that Mozart played a complicated piece the first time he sat down at a keyboard.; I have also known people who were directionless until something happened in their lives to provide a clear direction—unfortunately, it was usually something bad. But that just shows that good results often come from the icky side of life. Our lives are what we make them. Hmmm…maybe I should write a series of questions on locus of control.
Dessert: What made you happy today?: Answering questions for my former boss and having her refer to me as “Oh, WBT master.”

25 Most Influential Albums

2009-02-26T20:18:00.010-06:00

My friend Austin tagged me in this Facebook meme. (For those of you reading in Facebook, click View Original Post to see the blog entry.)

The rules for the meme are:

Think of 25 albums—which breaks my 10-item limit—that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it.

They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world.

When you finish, tag 25 others, including me.

So here’s my list in alphabetical order by artist:

Bach, Six Brandenburg Concertos

This was my introduction to classical music. It was laying around the band hall, and we played it sometimes in the mornings. My favorite was #5, but I like them all. If not for this album, I would never have bought both of Wendy Carlos’s Switched on Bach releases.

Beatles, Hey, Jude

Hey, Jude was the next Beatles album I bought. I thought it was a real album at the time. Only later did I learn that it was pieced together out of “leftover” tracks from the British release. There were usually 12 or more songs on the British LPs but only 10 on the US releases of the same albums. Bean counters!

Beatles, Abbey Road

What can I say? Anyone who wasn’t inspired by Abbey Road didn’t listen to music.

George Benson, Breezin’

I loved the way GB sang his guitar solos. I later played in a band with a guy who played just as well as Benson and claimed to have arranged the Bobby Womac title track when he was Etta James’s music director.

Guy Clark, Old No. 1

Guy Clark’s first album was completely different than anything I had ever heard, which is strange considering the appropriateness of its name. Many of the songs had already been taken to the top of the country charts by other artists. Clark is an excellent guitarist, but he is a superlative poet first. And Emmylou Harris, a good friend of Guy and his wife Suzanna, sings harmony.

Dire Straits, Communiqué

While ’Sultans of Swing’ caught my ear, I didn’t buy the first album until much later. Instead, I started with the second one—the one that was so successful I’ve had to pull out my copy to prove it even exists—and fell in love with the band. Every track is good, but the most memorable is ‘Les Boys,”a cute little ditty about an S&M caberet.

Dire Straits, Love over Gold

“Two men say they’re Jesus; one of them must be wrong…How come Jesus gets Industrial Disease?” And let’s not forget “Telegraph Road.” Brothers in Arms was something of a let down after this, great as it was.

Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer

This was actually the second ELP album I bought, starting my tradition of buying the first album second. My most vivid memory of this album is listening to it while watching Halloween on HBO with the sound off. ELP was a better match to the timing and mood of the movie than the original soundtrack. But then, I never did like John Carpenter’s music. I always thought he was just to cheap to hire a real composer.

Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Brain Salad Surgery

Complete with a cover by H.R. Giger, this was the most awe-inspiring music I had ever heard. My first ELP album and my first concert. I remember cupping my hands over my friend’s left ear and screaming at the top of my lungs, ’This really doesn’t sound that loud!”—only to have him turn to me and move his lips in a pattern that looked like, “Wha?” There was a little tempo instability in the live performance, but the album was perfect.

Fanny, Fanny Hill

Fanny was the most underrated band in rock. I have two of their albums, but this is my favorite. To my knowledge, they were the first all-female hard rock band.

Merl Haggard, Greatest Hits

I was making a living playing country music, and I realized most of the songs I really liked were written by Merl. So I picked up this album and played it to death. Like the song says, “I’ll fix your flat tire, Merl.”

Emmylou Harris, Pieces of the Sky

“And I would walk all the way from Bolder to Birmingham if I thought I could see, I could see your face.” Emmylou has always downplayed her own songwriting, but the songs that moved me the most were her own. Anyone can cover a Beatles tune. I remember playing this album over and over.

Emmylou Harris, Evangeline

Evangeline is one of my favorite Emmylou albums. I thought it was the most startlingly original work she had done since Pieces of the Sky. It even had hints of the future Trio albums with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt singing harmony on “Mr. Sandman.” Her cover of James Taylor’s “Millwork” made me cry the first time I heard it. Imagine how shocked I was to learn that it was pieced together from the outtakes of several other albums.

Kris Kristofferson, Jesus Was a Capricorn

Kristofferson is my favorite American songwriter—slightly ahead of Jimmy Webb—and he’s on Colbert tonight. This was the first of his albums I bought, and soon bought everything else he had released. I loved the gravel of his voice, which seemed to mirror the acidity of his lyrics. He lost something when he took voice lessons and tried to sing. He should have left pitch to Rita Coolidge.

Kris Kristofferson, Border Lord

It was really hard to choose between Border Lord and Spooky Lady’s Sideshow. And while I dearly love both, I listed the earlier work here because of a gaff I made. Without presceening, I played “Rescue Mission” on the radio the day I bought the album. I’ll never forget hearing, “‘And here’s to my old friend,’ he said and kiss his ass goodbye.” Then came, “The captain’s wife was aging, and the first mate heard her scream when Tommy slipped tobasco in the captain’s Vaseline.”

Lobo, Introducing Lobo

My introduction to soft rock. I learned to play every song on it, but I doubt I could remember a single one today. Well, maybe “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo.” Let’s not find out.

Linda Ronstadt, Heart Like a Wheel

I fell in love with Linda Ronsadt when I heard her sing “Long, Long Time” on The Tonight Show in her bare feet. Hear Like a Wheel was the first time I knew who she was. What a wonderful album.

Linda Ronstadt, Prisoner in Disguise

With two songs by John David Souther, this is one of the best albums of all time.

Steeleye Span, Below the Salt

I bought this album because a good review by Bob Claypool. It became one of my favorites. Who else could have a top10 hit (in Brittain, not here) with “Gaudete.”

Steeleye Span, Parcel of Rogues

This one ranks up there with Prisoner in Disguise. The title track is done very darkly, seven voices and a bass drum, until the instruments kick in to end it. Not a bad song on it, but my favorite has to be “Cam Ye O’re Frae Fance.”

Al Stewart, Past, Present, and Future

I heard this album on one of those radio shows where they played the whole album, but missed the artist and title. It blew me away. Two years later, I walked in on one of my friends listening to it. I bought it the next day. It has never “left me here with the Post World War II Blues.”

Al Stewart, Year of the Cat

Not his best album, but definitely his most successful. My favorites from this one: “If It Doesn’t Come Naturally,” “On the Border,” and “Flying Sorcery.”

Rick Wakeman, Journey to the Center of the Earth

This tremendous album set the stage for Wakeman’s career writing the music for soft porn movies like China Blue. Davi almost ruined this on for me, tho. To this day, I can’t hear that large choir sing, “Praise God,” without hearing “Frisbee!”

Who, Odds and Sodds

“’Cause I’m a farmer…”

Triumvirat, Spartacus

Triumvirat is a German ELP knock-0ff, but Spartacus was an awesome album nonetheless.

Gwyn — RIP

2009-02-24T16:19:00.002-06:00

And More Music

2009-02-23T13:29:00.005-06:00

Triskelion. More pictures on Facebook.

Suna and I went to see Beccano’s band play in public for the first time tonight. Triskelion played an open mic at Nuno’s Bar and Grill (north).

We arrived with the band a little before 19:00. The kids had told us they would play a sometime between 19:00 and 20:00, but the guy who ran the show said his band played the first set, which started at 21:00. He promised to get Triskelion on next so we could get the kids home for school.

We settled down to wait with the other parents and Jeff. While we waited, we nibbled on bar food—jalepeño poppers (be careful how you type that), Buffalo wings, and so on. We talked about nothing and told old jokes. You know, the stuff you do when you’re bored and can’t do anything about it.

Finally, starting time rolled around. The first band took the stage. They we really good—two guitars, bass, three-part harmonies, tight, tight, tight. They kept looking over at the kids and cracking jokes like “This is what it’s like to be our age and still trying to do this for a living.” They even played two covers of ELP songs: “From the Beginning” and “Lucky Man.”

The it was the kid’s turn. They learned how to adjust to the room on a medley of “Johnny B. Goode” and “Revolution”—or as Parker described it, “two songs we kinda smooshed together.” Beccano did a great job on the bass solo for “My Generation,” and they finished strong with a Hendrix-like cover of “Hey Joe.”

The crowd, mostly older musicians there to jam, was really supportive of the kids. The guy running the show talked them off the stage by saying, “You really need to give it up for these guys again. This is the next generation of doing what we do.” Suna said he invited them back anytime they want to play.

Combined with yesterday, my life seems filled with music. So that is what I am grateful for this week: an abundance of music and nice people.

A Day for Music…

2009-02-22T21:43:00.004-06:00

What I really wanted to do at this point was stop singing and listen to Bowman play, but I soldiered on with a smile.

Photo by Jon Montgomery

… and music of all kinds. We started this Sunday morning in church singing “Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine” to balance a rash of more traditional hymns. The choir director’s ubermusical son joined us on stage.

It was strange having someone else play bass, especially since he played so much better than I do. (But then I think he is majoring in performance—maybe composition—and will probably go on to grad school.) There were times I just wanted to listen to him play rather than concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing.

Here we are at the Artz benefit enjoying some music we could hardly hear.

Photo by Jon Montgomery (He was here, too.)

He played a Peavy bass that came with the frets filed down so that it occasionally gives that fretless moan but has the pitch stability of a fretted bass. I’d like to look into that for some of my own tunes.

The choir director played a really nice piece by Sate, which apparently sounds a lot like sauté, for the postlude. The piece was very lovely in its misleading simplicity. That is, it sounded simple but wasn’t.

Afterward we practiced with a Dixieland-ish—I can’t call it a Dixieland band because we have sheet music and we all mostly play what is written—band. We will perform in church and at a religious education dinner over the next couple of weeks—but I’m not sure in which order.

Later we went to a benefit to save Art’s Rib House, a South Austin landmark that has fallen on hard times recently. We took Beccano’s band, Triskelion. We arrived in time to stand in a really long line and listen to Art’s band while we waited.

After Art, we listened to a local jazz duet featuring trumpet and piano. Suna got to hear her heartthrob Slaid Cleaves do a set that ended with a yodel. We left during a set by a really hot, young local fiddler. I had had about as much fun as I could handle in a day, and the kids were looking bored.

First Day Back in the Garden

2009-02-21T21:56:00.004-06:00

I took a bunch of pictures of my new wild flower garden, but none of the pictures were usable. Maybe tomorrow.

Today was the first time I’ve had a chance to get back into the garden since winter set in. I had a lot of fun, and my head is clear even though I forgot to take my allergy medicine today.

The first thing I had to do was drag all of the equipment out of the garage. I ran the mulching mower over a big pile of leaves the wind had gathered in the side yard. I was going to put them in the compost pile after sifting through it. But I ran out of time, so the bag of leaves is still sitting by the back gate.

I then ran the edger and swept the resulting dirt and grass pieces. Finally, I ran the weed eater around the flower bed walls. It was all great fun that pointed out how out of shape I am after the winter’s inactivity.

The cure for this is more work in the garden. Luckily, the days are getting longer, so I will have the chance.

Food for Thought #5

2009-02-20T00:38:00.005-06:00

Few things beat this blend of shrimp, garlic, and peppers. Nummy!

Photo source: Closet Cooking

Other than the economy, anti-Americanism has been causing some people in the United States (and some of our neighbors who fear being mistaken for an American) to reconsider travel abroad. That got me thinking…

Appetizer: Have you ever traveled outside your native country?: I have been to Canada, Mexico, Panamá, and El Salvador. Oh, and as Cheech and Chong would say, “and parts of Alabama.” Each country offered something unique in culture and landscape. And even though, El Salvador was the most dangerous—kidnapping is a growth industry there—it was still fun.
Soup: What’s the farthest from home you have ever ventured?: I think Edmonton, Alberta is actually farther north from me than either San Salvador or Cuidád Panamá, but I haven’t done the math recently enough to be sure. Oddly, most of my trips abroad have all landed me in the same time zone—with the exception of my trips to Canada, which have taken me to all the time zones in the lower 48 states, plus one.
Salad: Do you plan to travel abroad any time in the future, however long it may be? If so, where?: I hope so. I want to see New Zealand and parts of Australia. I have also wanted to visit he ruins of the Shaolin temple in Henan since I was a teen.
Entré: What would deter you most, fear of being targeted as an American, the security considerations of your on nation, or something else?: That answer depends on destination. For most of the world, excluding the caliphate (past, present, or potential), I am more afraid of my own country’s security policies. I’ve had to dig through my vehicle for change to be allowed back in to the United States after having spent too much of my cash in Canada. The Border Patrol won’t take an ATM card.
Dessert: If you could go anywhere in the world for free, where would you most want to go?: Answering this one, I realize it is redundant for me. I hope it isn’t for everyone. But since I worded the question in the superlative, I’ll go with New Zealand. Peter Jackson did an awesome job showcasing the terrain, but that only reinforced a desire to go. I first started thinking about a trip there (or possible emigration) in the late 1980s.

Google Yourself

2009-02-18T07:45:00.006-06:00

This post is approved by all of my chins.

This post originated as a Facebook meme. The rules are simple:

Google “[Your first name] needs”—including the quotes.
Post the first ten results without edit or explanation.

Of the ones I’ve seen before doing this, my favorites include:

Gene needs to be studied elsewhere
Michelle needs to take photography lessons (for a very good professional photographer)

So here we go with mine:

Lee needs more support.
Nat-a-lee [[needs a boy]].
Lee needs to do more for Korea’s upgrade.
What Sara Lee Needs Now: A Giant Wiener Roast.
Is Wonder Bread what Sara Lee Needs?
Spike Lee needs your help to make a cameraphone film.
Lee needs somebody to love.
Lee needs to fine tune himself for Delhi.
Lee needs a kidney.
Lee needs a debt waiver to forestall default.

Grateful Monday

2009-02-16T22:03:00.000-06:00

Trackgrease and Roxy came by to visit this weekend.

This weekend my son Trackgrease and his partner made it up to visit. Since they had said they were coming by a couple of times before, it was nice that they actually made it and stayed with us and went to church with us, too.

Trackgrease has been making a living singing, and I have always liked the sound of his voice when he sings. So it was no big surprise to hear him singing well at church. What did surprise me was that he even sang the out the children—neither the words nor music are easily findable in the hymnal.

I really shouldn’t have been surprised because he has mentioned that he might like to become UU minister. I don’t think he quite gets it that he has to finish a bachelor’s degree before he can enter the seminary, but that’s OK. Its a good goal. Suna and I would both like to take classes there, too. Just for the helluvit.

After church we went to South Congress. It was my idea. I wanted to do something nice for Suna, but I wasn’t prepared for the press of that many people. By the time we headed back north, my nerves were already shot, but I was trying to hold on. Then I made a wrong turn and got trapped in a parking lot where nobody moved and I couldn’t turn around to get back free. This set up a full-fledged panic attack. This couldn’t have helped Suna, who was already jangled from a series of stresses she has already blogged about. Sigh.

So I am grateful for Suna not freaking out when I had a panic attack. And I am grateful for one of the last things Trackgrease said to me before he went back home. He said he was glad that he could still come stay with me and feel like my son. So am I.

Food for Thought: Valentine’s Day Edition

2009-02-13T06:00:00.005-06:00

This Valentines cake looks delicious.

Photo source: Peggy’s Cake Decorating Ideas

Appetizer: What is your strongest childhood memory about Valentine’s Day?: I remember making cards and exchanging candy hearts in elementary school. By the time fifth grade rolled along, it didn’t mean anything because we bought boxes of cheap little cards and the school required us to give them to everyone in the class.
Soup: Who was your first crush?: Tammy Z. was a cute little redhead I met in first grade. She was the most beautiful girl I had known at the time. I think I had a crush on her because her name was Tammy, and I liked the song from the movie. I can still hear Debbie Reynolds singing it in my head.
Salad: Did your crush return the feelings?: We talked, so I guess that’s probably a yes for first grade.
Entré: Other than the massacre, what does Valentine’s Day make you think of?: Suna. I think school killed the spirit of Valentine’s Day for me. And she’s the first person I’ve known since elementary school to whom it matters. And who makes it matter to me. Still, I think every day should be Valentine’s Day.
Dessert: What are you going to do for your Valentine this year?: Last weekend when her ex had the boys, I took her out to a nice dinner at Z-Tejas, and we picked out some patio furniture for the new front patio. I spent much of Saturday putting it together. Hopefully, we will enjoy it for years has we have drinks—iced tea, beer, something stronger—with the neighbors and watch the neighborhood go by.

Update on Prospects

2009-02-11T11:52:00.008-06:00

These pansies perked up after a rare rain

I mentioned last week that I was confident about the future in the face of diminishing opportunities. This week I have some news to reinforce that confidence.

First, I heard back on the initial interview for the extended contract. The recruiter said that they were impressed with my credentials and would fit in well with the existing team. That means I have passed the first hurdle. We’ll see how it goes from here.

Next, I had a one-on-one with my new boss on the Fruit Company contract. I like her. She seems to be a straight-shooter. She also mentioned that she isn’t happy with the current mix of rotational, contract, and dedicated staff. While acknowledging the difficulty of adding dedicated staff in this economy, she said that doing so is one of her top priorities.

So that’s where things stand as I wait in the dentist office. Hopefully, cleaner teeth will make everything seem even rosier—and thornless.

Patio Furniture

2009-02-09T20:09:00.007-06:00

This is the new patio furniture that has been wet since I finished putting it together.

Suna and I celebrated Valentine’s Day early this year. We went to Z-Tejas, a restaurant that has some of the best food and deafening acoustics. Hopefully, the next time we go there, it will be warm enough to sit outside.

The other part of our Valentine’s Day celebration was to go to the Home Depot and buy some new patio furniture for our new patio. While we were deciding which set we wanted, we ran into the guy who built it for us. That was kind of a cool irony.

So I spent a good part of the weekend assembling the furniture. Even Ikea could learn something about packaging from Home Depot’s Hamilton Bay brand. Not only did they package all the tools required (as does Ikea), the shrink wrapped the nuts, bolts, washers, and spacers to cardboard backing that was labeled with the part reference from the assembly instructions. I was astounded.

This week, I am grateful for my special Valentine, Suna. Not to mention that I am also grateful for the new patio furniture and the patio to put it on. I’m looking forward to sitting out on the patio and sipping some cold beverages while getting to know the neighbors better.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that we got a healthy rain last night. It wasn’t enough to break the drought, but I appreciate every drop.

10 February Update: Added the picture I didn’t get to take when I was putting the furniture together.

Spring Cleaning (of the Camera)

2009-02-07T13:28:00.010-06:00

Beccano: just two years ago

Suna asked me to clean off the excess photos from the camera. Even with a 4GB card, we have to do that every couple of months.

Well, that’s never as easy as it sounds. First, I have to look at the pictures. Then I have to figure out what to do with them. Then I found out that Windows writes tags to the files to help search for them, so that meant I had to start looking at some of the older pictures.

One thing leads to another, and I found this shot of Beccano. I haven’t seen this little kid in a long time. He’s almost grown now.

Makes me wish there were more pictures of Trackgrease around. But we didn’t have digital cameras in those days, and we didn’t always remember to process the pictures we did take.

Does that mean I’m getting older, too? I hope not.

The Recession, RIFs, and Wow

2009-02-07T03:29:00.000-06:00

I’ve wanted a camper van for a long time. This one looks fun, but not for a long trip.

Photo source: BBC

This week was a difficult week on the job front. Yes, I still have a job, but my days are numbered. More on that later; I’m going to stay chronological in this post, even though I don’t really believe in linear time.

The first thing that happened was that I was invited to interview for a job. That’s never a bad thing, and I was excited. The interview went well, and we all had a good time. Anytime you spend most of the interview laughing with the interviewers, it’s a good thing, whether or not you get the job.

The next morning, I called the recruiter to touch base. She still hasn’t heard anything, and it’s a bit premature for that interview. But she did tell me that the fire has gone out around one of my other irons. That regulatory body decided to move someone they already employed into a contract position rather than reduce headcount in one place and bring me on in another. I have to admit it makes accounting sense, even if I don’t like it.

Then the department where I’m currently contracting at the Fruit Company was reorged. My boss is now filling the vacancy I originally interviewed for. Given the length of time it takes them to make a decision an the current economy, my contract will be long over—I may even be retired—before they free up the funding to add another instructional designer.

The state of the economy causes me to worry a bit, but I’m still confident and hopeful. I heard a promising bit on the news. It seems most companies are taking their RIFs upfront this year, front-loading the job cuts to save money the whole year. That means many economists are expecting job losses to slow as the year progresses. They’re now talking about peak unemployment of less than 20%.

I may not be able to find another contract soon, but at least the one I’m on can only expire once. That’s something to look forward to.