First Taste of Texas

Remember that C&W song, “The First Taste of Texas”? Think I will reminisce a little and think back to when I got my “first taste of Texas”. Actually, my first taste was when I flew down from Yankee Land to Houston for a job interview.

The first thing that hit me was the view out of the airplane’s window as we were descending for a landing at Houston’s big airport. All those trees, rivers, and lakes; where are all the mountains, deserts, and wide open spaces that I saw on all the “cowboy” shows?

After landing, I didn’t need to go outside to get to the hotel there at the airport. All the terminals and the hotel are connected by underground tunnels. Checked into the hotel, had dinner, and decided to step outside to take a look around. It was October and I did not expect what was about to happen. As soon as I stepped out that door I got hit in the face with air that must have escaped from a run-a-way sauna. Could not believe the humidity and heat, and it was way after the sun went down. Started thinking, “what am I getting myself into”. Needless to say, that during that first winter in Texas, I was in shirt sleeves when everyone else was wearing Woolrich and other heavy hooded coats. Now, I am the one wearing the coat.

It was not just the weather that surprised me, but the insects! I had spent the first 36 years of my life living in Pennsylvania and then I moved to Michigan to take a great position. In the short time that I was there, I did try to fish and canoe some of the rivers, but found out that the mosquitoes were so bad at times that you couldn’t breathe without inhaling them. Had to run back to the vehicle for protection, so I knew about bugs. But, roaches were another story. Up north, the only place I had ever seen a roach was in an old barn and they were small and quick to disappear.

Before I go on, let me fill you in on some history. I first came to Texas without my family to find a place to live. Pulled a pop-up tent camper that I lived in until I found a place. The company I came to work for was Richmond Tank Car Company and the Baytown area seamed like the closest place to find temporary living quarters. My youngest son came down to join me and we finally found a town house type of apartment that had two floors with two bedrooms up and one down.

OK, back to the bugs. The first Texas size roach I saw was at work out in the shop in a “men’s room”. It was huge; I had never seen anything like it!!! I ran over and stepped on it. It was so big that I skated across the floor on what was left of it, YUK!!!!

Now, back to the apartment; my son and I moved in and since we had been living in a tent camper, we didn’t have a lot of furniture. We took the mattresses out of the camper and put on the floor, brought in the small TV, and lawn chairs to sit on. Not quite the typical bachelor pad (grin). The first evening there after supper, my son and I settled down to watch a little TV. All of sudden I saw one of those huge roaches run up the wall, then another, then another, etc.

The first thing the next day I complained to the management. They said someone moved out of the unit next to me and it was sprayed, so the bugs must have ran into my place. (Yeh, right.) They said that they would get an exterminator in as soon as they could, but it would take awhile.

Well, they say when you get hit with a sour lemon, make lemonade. I stopped at a store on the way home the next day and saw some toy pistols that shot those darts with the suction cups on the end. I purchased two of them and that night, my son and sat there watching TV, and when a roach ran up the wall, BANG. Hey, it was fun and my son enjoyed it. Of course we didn’t hit everyone that we shot at but we had a good time. Of course when my wife and other son finally came, she asked what the marks were on the wall. We didn’t know???????

I bored you enough for today, will continue with some more “first tastes” in a later blog. Had a lot to learn.

Words

Good morning. My four alarm clocks (my dogs) allowed me a few extra minutes of sleep this morning. Wonder why, they are never later waking me than 06:30. Oh well, one should not look a gift horse in the mouth.

For a few days, I just had my computer system here plugged into the wall outlet, with a small surge protector. I have an UPS (uninterrupted power supply) that I traded a large pen / pencil plotter for. It is humongous and noisy. You have heard the old saying that it takes two men and a boy to pick up, well with this UPS unit, that is very correct and the three of them would be straining. It takes a lot of fan power to cool all those batteries, thus the noise part. The inverter / charger may have something to do with it also. The quiet was appreciated but with all the threats of afternoon thunder storms, I plugged it back in.

Anyway, to get to the point, I am running Windows XP Pro as an operating system. It seems to run Inventor and AutoCAD much better than the other ones, but it is slow loading. I don’t like to sit and do nothing while I am waiting, so I picked up a big dictionary, closed my eyes, opened it and pointed my finger. I figured maybe whatever word it landed on, could be the inspiration and topic of my blog today. Didn’t quite work out like I wanted. This is unbelievable, out of all the words in that book, I had to land on one that I had never heard of. Can you imagine that?

The word was “monochasium”. Have you ever heard that word? Well I have not, kind of makes me feel stupid, not knowing the first word I picked in the dictionary. Then I read the meaning and felt more stupid than before. The meaning (other than the Greek) was, “a cymose or determinate inflorescence having only a single main axis”, HEY, I know what axis is!!! But, what is inflorescence, maybe something that shines? Boy, I am feeling dumber and dumber as this goes on.

OK, I dare you to look up cymose. . . Yep, I did, and it means: “1. of or like a cyme; determinate. 2. bearing a cyme or cymes.” Kind of puts you back where you started, doesn’t it. Kind of like a closed loop. OK, I looked up cyme and it cleared it up. But what about inflorescence?

Now why should I take all your fun away, you look them up.

Garbage Day

Today is garbage day, and it is also the day they pick up the garbage. Yep, you guessed it, I ain’t got nothing good to say today. I woke up this morning with a dang jingle going through my head. Just the chorus of “Christmas times a coming”, now why oh why would that song be going through my head?!?!? Tell you what, you think of that song and maybe it will pop out of my head and into yours. . .

Back to the garbage pickup day, that took up a big portion of my morning. Had to make sure all the garbage and throw-away stuff was out in the cans. (Why do they still call them garbage cans when they are made out of plastic?) Then, it is a long way to where my driveway comes out at the road. For example, the portion of my property that faces the road is a half acre. There is 43,560 sq. ft. in one acre, so one half acre would be 21,780 sq. ft. The lot is 60 feet wide, so it is 363 feet just to my gate. Actually, my gate sits back further than that. And you can’t see my gate from my house. It sits back another three or four hundred feet or so.

So now you see, it takes some effort to take the garbage out for pick-up, and I am too dang stubborn to put it in the Jeep. Figure that I need the exercise. Yeh, right. . .

OK, I told you my blog was about garbage, and it turned out that my blog was (is) garbage. So, I had better quit now before I get any deeper in the stuff. .

Billy Bob's Boat

While Billy Bob was over in Georgia visiting with his family, he kept talking about fishing and such. Yep, ole Billy Bob just don’t fish from the bank, he goes out in a boat, and the way I heard it told, that it was not just an ordinary boat, but a big old fancy one. I do think that ole BB likes boats. I hear he even lived on one.

I ran into him the end of last April down at the Terlingua Ranch. You know, down in that area there is just not a lot of water lying around, but he still had a big ole fancy riverboat with him. See:

I wonder if’n he ever fished out of that boat in Georgia or if his grandkids took it off his hands and launched it?


The Old Texan, Ben, was also down there a visiting with Bill Bob, so via email, I set up a meeting to buy them lunch at The Grub Shack. Well, I guess ole Ben just got too fidgety and left for his home just about a half hour before I was to meet up with them. Dang Ben, you missed a good, free lunch.

While I was down in that area I got to see a lot of stuff and meet some great people, including John Wells of the Field Lab. I will, sometime in the future, do a post on my trip to that area, but for now just let me say a little about it.

Terlingua, the ghost town has a lot of history and old adobe structures. Here is a picture looking through a window of one such structure:

And you can’t go to Terlingua without stopping at the Starlight where I enjoyed a great meal consisting of an Axis Venison burger with chipotle sauce. Yum, Yum.

And here is the RV park that we stayed at, just outside of Terlingua.

Got to get back there sometime soon. I really liked that area and would like to live there.

Everything Went Black

You see, I was just sitting there enjoying a couple of my favorite TV shows. ( I got me a whole long list of favorites, don’t you see) These Monday night shows are Pawn Stars and Pickers. (Yes Billy Bob, I spelled it right. It is “Pawn Stars” not “Porn Stars”.) Now that I got your interest up, may I proceed?

Yep, just watching the old boob tube (No, that wasn’t part of Porn, I mean Pawn Stars). Maybe I need to start this again.

Anyway, everything just went black. I mean EVERYTHING. I stumbled around until I found my flash light and went out side to take a look. I walked to where I could see and there were no signs of lights in any direction. Guess this was a fairly wide spread power outage.

My wife loves these artificial candles that you put batteries in and they flicker and look just like real ones. She has purchased quite a few from QVC (Kathie, you know QVC) and some from local stores. We got them hanging on the walls, sitting on the mantel, on shelves, on the table, everywhere. So, this was her opportunity to shine, literally. In no time at all she had our home flickering away with soft light everywhere. Got to admit, it was really nice.

Well getting on toward 22:00, we were thinking about what to do if the power didn’t come on before we headed off to dream land. The main two things was the stuff in the refrigerator / freezer and my oxygen generator that I use at night. I have been on oxygen at night for a lot of years.

The solution: take the food stuff out to the motor-home and put it in the refrigerator out there and since I have an oxygen generator already out in the motor-home, we could just move in there for the night.

The refrigerator runs on either ac electric or propane, so it is always on (unless I turn it off or run out of gas). But the oxygen generator must have ac power. So the solution to that is simple, fire up the generator. Anyway, I would want to run the air conditioner.

Of course, after I carried two bags of food stuff out to the motor-home and started stuffing it into the freezer, wouldn’t you know, the power came back on. Carried everything back in and all returned to as normal as it gets around here. Sorry no pictures, dark is hard to get a picture of, unless you leave the lens cap on. I should have taken some of the house all lit up with imitation candles. It did look warm and cozy. Maybe the warm part was because the air conditioning was not running. . .

Climate and Direction

It is another Monday morning, a start of another work week for some. Maybe I ought to check my email to see if I have any work to do, will be right back.

Well, that was quick, nothing. Been that way since back in July, but that is OK with me. I read The Old Fat Man Adventures and am envious. The weather conditions that he described just made me drool. Looked out the window at the motor-home and asked myself what the heck am I doing here!?!? By 06:30 this morning it rained a little and the temperature is at chilling low of 78 degrees (and going up fast). Who in their right mind living in this area would pay good money for a sauna when all they need to do is step outside? The day before yesterday it sprinkled rain and the temperature was 99 degrees. I stuck my head outside and it hurt to breathe. Then yesterday it was 102 degrees in the shade and I don’t even want to know what the weather forecast is for today.

Not going to head to cooler situations just now. I have too many things up in the air.

I was just wondering about the “sense of direction” that some people have and some do not. My family moved to the country before I started to school, so I must have been 5 or 6 years old. I spent almost all of my outdoor time in the forest behind our house. It was no little plot of trees, but covered many square miles. I knew every inch of it and never got lost. As I aged, and went hunting, I still retained my sense of direction.

My sense of direction was only good in the woods. You could drive me to a spot where I had never been, park the car, get out and walk around hunting half the day, and I could turn around and walk right back to the car without giving it a second thought. Must have sub-consciously kept track at every turn and what direction the car was after the turn.

Get me out of the woods and I get lost all the time. I got lost in a “two traffic light” town, I have been lost in towns and cities of all sizes, and I went the wrong way across a whole State one time. What you say? Yep a whole State.

I was working a project for G.E. Nuclear Fuels and Components on the east coast of N.C. and my home was (and is) in Cut & Shoot, TX. Well, one time my wife wanted to go back to Texas and I wanted to change vehicles so that I could have the 4-wheel drive at the beach. My son and a friend drove the 4w drive from Texas and my wife and I from N.C. and met in eastern Alabama where we spent the night at a motel. I got up to a cloudy, overcast morning and decided to head back before everyone else was ready. So headed off on down the Interstate, that is, until I saw the sign welcoming me to Mississippi. WHAT, how did that state get on east side of Alabama.

Well, at the next exit, I turned around. A while later, I saw my other vehicle coming toward me in the west bound lane. I flashed my lights, honked my horn, and waved at them. When they went by I saw their surprised looks and their mouths hanging open. Almost could hear them say “what the heck!!!”.

If I were a bird, I would migrate north in the autumn and South in the spring or East and West or . . . who knows, I am lost already.

Spelling

Spelling. I guess by now you have figured out that I don’t do too well in that subject, unless of course, there is a spelling checker and then sometimes I am so far off, it doesn’t help. So, this makes me wonder why I am such a bad speller.

The first thing that comes to mind is my mind (or brain). You see, my brain leans more toward mathematics and science. The science part falls apart when you get into “string theory” and quantum mechanics and the math part falls apart after I run out of fingers and toes.

Let me be a little plainer. I need rules to follow, good simple plain and to the point rules. In English, since that is the only language I know except for a couple of Latin words left over from a high school Latin class, there are rules but it seems there are more exceptions than not. As an example, one rule states that in a word a vowel followed by a consonant and then the consonant followed by a second vowel, the first vowel is pronounced long. (bite vs. bit) (mite vs. mitt) (mute vs. mutt) You get the picture. But how about “water”, shouldn’t that be pronounced the same as “waiter”? Shouldn’t it be spelled “watter”? And the same thing with “awe”? Maybe it is the w that gets in the way and messes things up. OK, then how about “caper” with the long a vs. “capital” with a short a? I get so confused.

There are other rules that fall short, but I will not bore you with any more. Maybe it is the way I learned. Did you learn spelling with phonetics or flash cards? I used to try to memorize all the words for spelling tests in grade school. Somewhere along the line I fell short of learning all the words in the dictionary. I now try to sound them out using the rules (grin). But plane and plain sound the same, as do hundreds of others. I took the plain plane and landed on the plane. (yep, more than one meaning for the same word is also confusing to me.)

Let’s face it, thank Microsoft for spell checkers, I am beyond any help. In fact, I am getting worse.

I type with the keyboard balanced on my upper crossed leg. It rocks back and forth and when I type, sometimes my fingers get on the wrong keys. When that happens, I usually spell the word right. . . (or is that write?)