Second Wind

I have been away for a long time. I think I have lost most of my friends here. I will miss them but I don’t blame them for moving on. When a blog goes dead you don’t stick around. I understand that.

I’ve been having a hard time with my job lately. I don’t even have the energy right now to tell you exactly why that is except to say that I am never home anymore. I’m either driving across Texas or flying to some other state to meet with people I don’t like. I pretty much live in hotels, motels and airports these days. I always get home on the weekends but I’m too wiped-out to do anything.

I found something tonight that made me very happy. Believe it or not, this made me feel better. I don’t care what anyone thinks. I miss the music of the 70s.

One more time but with stop/start animation like the Gumby and Pokey show.

I Am Almost Certain That This Was Not Intentional

This is my desk. It’s both my personal desk and my work desk. What I am directing your attention to here is that big wall map. It’s a map of the entire Houston area and I use it for reference.

This is a closeup of the East side of the city. Does anyone else see what I see? If not, click the photo to enlarge it.

Gone gone gone

This is just bad-ass.

The Lunatics in our Aquarium

These are not pet store turtles. My daughter Gabby scooped them out of some lake around here. At that time they were about the size of a fifty cent piece. They are now over 6 inches long, not counting the head or tail and I have no reason to believe that they are going to stop growing.

This is an 80 gallon tank. That’s big. Chinese restaurant big. These two turtles are living a life of luxury. However, if they do get too big for it we will have to take them back to a lake or reservoir. I hope that doesn’t happen.

Stats Don’t Lie

I know that I have neglected this lame-ass, inane blog for a long time but why the hell did my stat chart have to give me the “finger”? What you see below is not an image pulled from the internet. This is an actual screenshot of my WordPress dashboard on December 19, 2010. A double click on the image will enlarge it if you would like to see more detail.

The Midnight Special

When I was a kid back in the late 60’s we saw TV in black and white. Color TV existed of course but our house didn’t make that transition until 1970 or so. I remember the day we got our first color TV set. It was an RCA with a really bitchin’, smooth turning channel knob. It also had three buttons on it. I don’t know what they were for because my sister and I were not allowed to touch them.

We were now living large. We had all three networks in full color. No, make that four. There was also PBS. So four, read it, four channels in full color. Yeah, that’s right. By turning the channel knob we could watch any network we wanted to, anytime we wanted to and in color.

That is until the TV gods decided to quit broadcasting for the day. Late at night, every night, the Star Spangled Banner would play and images of the flag, majestic purple mountains and amber waves of grain were shown on the screen. Suddenly an ear-splitting tone would shoot out of the TV at the same time the dreaded “test card of death” appeared.

When you saw this it meant you would not be seeing anything on TV until the next morning. At all. On any channel.

This was my favorite show back then. “The Midnight Special” aired from 1972 to 1981. I think. I do remember it coming on every Friday night. It was a show featuring the biggest music acts of the time. They played live right on TV and perhaps because of what era this was it was never, ever boring.

I want you to see two of the most memorable performances I saw on this show. I was bored last night and had nothing better to do than look this up. I remember seeing this for the first time back in the 70’s. I think it has everything to do with the fact that to this day and at my age I still love loud, snotty guitar rock.

Again?

If you haven’t heard this yet, or even care, Willie Nelson has once again been busted for possession of marijuana. I don’t smoke the stuff but I know enough to say that anyone who does is the absolute least threat to anyone or anything. To arrest a 70-something country icon for this, again, just seems ridiculous to me.

I’m not here to defend him, I’m just pointing out what a busload of dumb-asses they were. You see, they were busted at a border patrol checkpoint outside of El Paso, Texas.

I grew up in south Texas (Corpus Christi). My Dad’s family comes from even farther south. They grew up right on the Mexican border in a part of the state known as the Rio Grande Valley. I spent half of my childhood down there and part of the experience was going through those checkpoints on the way out. Back then the Border Patrol was just making sure you weren’t smuggling a Mexican citizen into the US. These days it is much, much more serious. I don’t think I need to explain why.

I drive down there for work occasionally. The only difference with the checkpoints now is that when you stop, your vehicle is surrounded by no less than 3 or 4 drug sniffing dogs and their handlers. They are quite thorough too. It seems impossible to me that someone could sneak even a single pot seed through there.

What I read is that at the Sierra Blanca, Texas checkpoint, just outside of El Paso, an officer opened up a door of the bus and smelled marijuana.

Nelson and his crew are the biggest bunch of dumb-asses ever. Think about it. You’re Willie Nelson in your Willie Nelson tour bus heading toward a border checkpoint. Did it not occur to you that the Willie Nelson tour bus just might be scrutinized a wee bit more than all the other vehicles? There is a huge bag of weed on the bus and someone just couldn’t wait the twenty minutes to get past the checkpoint before lighting a joint. I don’t think any of them belong in jail but I must say that they certainly asked for it.

Really?

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — A Hazmat team was called to the “Dancing with the Stars'” offices on Friday evening after reps for the show received a package containing an unknown white powder substance, Access Hollywood has learned.

“An envelope containing an unknown substance was delivered to the ‘Dancing with the Stars’ production office on Friday evening,” a rep for ABC said in a statement to Access on Friday night. “Security and the Los Angeles Fire Department and Los Angeles Police Department were immediately notified. Measures were taken to secure the area and ensure the safety of personnel.”

A white, powdered substance sent to an ABC production office? LAPD, Hazmat, You should move fast. Most, if not all of that substance may be gone by the time you get there.

The countdown has begun

My oldest daughter is getting married this Friday.

My youngest girl is skipping two days of school beginning tomorrow so that she, her sister and their mom can begin getting nails did, hair did, do dress stuff and who knows whatever else women do two or three days before a wedding.

I tried on my tux this evening at the overpriced men’s store with it’s swishy, snooty male employees. It fits.

Tomorrow night is rehearsal at the church and then dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

Return of my Possum Friend

I know it’s spelled “Opossum”. I just don’t like spelling that way because I don’t pronounce it that way. Tonight was the third visit from this dude. I really don’t know if it’s male or female. All I know is that it startles me every time it shows up. They are so stealthy. They don’t make a sound when they walk. They just appear.

That’s the neat thing about it. I’ll be sitting out on the front patio with my mind far, far off somewhere and it lumbers out from the hedges onto my patio and just keeps walking toward me. I think Possums are as blind as Armadillos. I say that because I’ve had many encounters with Armadillos.

Armadillos are as blind as bats. And they’re mainly nocturnal, just like possums. I’ve had them walk right up to my feet at night, never seeing me, then catch a whiff of my scent, jump about two feet off the ground and then run for their lives. I don’t think their sense of smell is very acute either. The same seems to be true with possums.

Every time it has walked up on me as I’m sitting on the patio, for some reason it always walks directly toward me. And keeps coming. It neither sees me nor smells me. I don’t want it to bump into me, get frightened and then bite me so I start saying “Hey . . . Hey . . . HEY!” It never hears me. Then I start stomping a foot and eventually he turns his head (usually in the wrong direction) and realizes that there just might be someone else here. He then takes flight by taking about 3 or 4 seconds to turn around and waddle off in the other direction.

I know possums are considered vermin. And they are. I just can’t help thinking that they are cute. I love their crossed eyes, and their ugly teeth that look just like those of Quark from Star Trek. To me they are the perfect example of something that is so ugly that it’s cute.