Wildflower Drive

On the advice of someone at work, Anna and I drove down towards Fredricksburg today with the girls to check out the wildflowers. The bluebonnets are past their peak, but other flowers are just starting to come out in their full glory. We were not dissapointed. The wildflowers are absolutely breathtaking. The pictures don't even come close to doing them justice. These flowers go on and on for over 200 miles along the sides of the roads. Their smell permeates the air. It's just really neat. Take a look at the photos. Come see us next weekend.

I've posted the pictures we took today to a web album.

Great Western Loop

For those of you who are backpacking fans, Andrew Skurka is about to begin his attempt of the Great Western Loop. Yup, he's going to try to complete 6,875 miles this season, starting Monday. 9 States. 12 National Parks. 75 Wilderness areas. His pack weight will vary with the segment he is on, but it looks like his full skin out weight (that's the total amount of weight he's carrying, including the clothes and shoes he's wearing) will range between 10 and 15 pounds.

For those of you who don't know who Andrew Skurka is, he's the first person to complete the Sea-to-Sea trail... hiking from Northeastern Maine to Seattle in 11 months. This winter he also completed his "Ultralight in the Nation's Ice Box tour" hiking from Duluth to Ely in January. 380 miles in 16 days with a pack weight of 24 pounds. Average Temperature: 5 degrees. Reading about his adventures is very interesting.

Wait 15 Minutes.

There's a saying down here:

If you don't like the weather in Texas just wait 15 minutes, it will change.

Apparently, you need to be careful what you ask for. A few days ago, I posted a sarcastic post lamenting the lack of snow. It was a joke, really just intended to rile up a couple of my friends in Minnesota who were getting snow while it was 90+ degrees here.

Alas, I woke up this morning to this:



Yup... that's snow on the roof. Thankfully, this was in the forecast, so we were able to get all of the plants in the garage over night.

On another note, I've always heard people talk about how beautiful the wildflowers are in Texas. In particular, my Grandma always used to rave on about the Blue Bonnets that Grandpa and her always saw when they would spend winter/early spring in Texas. Last year, I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. I never really saw any wildflowers last year. Some folks told me that it was too dry and the winter had been too mild for many flowers to come out. This year has been much different. We had a cold winter (by Texas standards) and the spring has been pretty wet. Brownwood actually looks more like Greenwood.

The wildflowers are magnificent, especially the Blue Bonnets. When I realized it was snowing this morning, I decided to go take some pictures just in case they die off in the next few days. All of these were taken within 2 miles of the house. They are everywhere and they are very cool.

Life is Better When it Snows

Over the last few days, I've decided I miss snow.

It's terrible. I've mowed the lawn three times already this year. I've already had to fertilize, and I've even extended my French drain due to some backyard flooding from recent heavy rains.

Yes, life is better when it snows. Just this weekend, Anna wanted to plant flowers. Sure, you know, she went to the store and picked everything out. I sat on the driveway and played with the kids. I got sunburned. Bummer. But hey, Anna did do a swell job on the flowers. But, if it had been snowing, I could have been, you know, reading a book or something instead of getting sunburned.



Yes, life is better when it snows. This evening, it was warm. I had to crawl into the attic to turn on the auxillary exhaust fan. It was 89 degrees at 6 PM. We decided to go on a walk. I got sweaty. ewww.

Yes, life is better when it snows. Apparently the kids got hot on the walk too. I don't know if I'd consider it a "walk" for them. Tori rode in the stroller and Hope rode her bike. When we got home, Tori said, "I need ice cream. I'm hot". We didn't have any ice cream, so I was forced to go down to Sonic (Think Dairy Queen, only better).

Yes, life is better when it snows. If it had only been colder lately, I could be like all of my friends back home in Minnesota, enjoying the last forays of winter (You are out camping in this, aren't you Pete?) -- But instead, I'm forced to sit here in the shade on the back porch, enjoying the sunset on this warm evening whilst sipping on my strawberry banana slushy. It reminds me of snow I guess.

Famous Kid

Hey... my kid is "famous". Grandma is in town this week and took the kids to the park yesterday so Anna and I could get some painting done in peace. Go Grandma!

Anyway, while they were at the park, a reporter from the local newspaper showed up and interviewed a bunch of kids for a story he was doing on spring break. Hope made the front page.

Pretty funny stuff. It's too bad she failed to mention that in addition to going to the park and playing with her dollhouse, I also took her to the local Brownwood Jaycees Rattlesnake Roundup on Saturday. I'll have to post some pictures from that event later.

Weather

To all my friends in Minnesota, I feel sorry for you. Looks like it's a little chilly up there....




It's pretty nice down here. Now would be a good time to come visit:

Chillin'

In case you haven't noticed, we've been getting some interesting weather down here in Texas. Over the weekend we started getting a little freezing rain, which really wasn't supposed to be that big of a deal. Of course, anytime the temperature drops below freezing here, the weather service issues a severe weather warning, etc. The ice was supposed to turn to rain, but the temperatures kept hovering around freezing and we ended up getting a bunch of rain and then ice. By Monday, we had 1/4 inch of ice.



So, watching people down here drive on ice is absolutely hilarious. I pulled up to a stop sign behind a guy in a pickup on the way to work. When he started to go, naturally his tires began to slip. Nothing to him, he just kept giving it more gas. And more gas. And then he really laid on it. Finally, he wore through the ice, chirped his tires and lurched through the intersection, tires a blazing with his back end flying all over the place. This was repeated at every intersection until we got to work, when I realized that the guy in the truck was someone I work with. hehe.

So, we had 1/4 inch of ice and the roads are little slick, but not too bad. Of course this means that pretty much everything is shut down including FedEx, UPS, and almost all trucking companies. Commerce basically ground to a halt.

The weather was somewhat better on Tuesday and everything was open again. Late in the afternoon someone came running into my office to tell me that it was snowing. This was big news and we all went to the windows to check it out. It was flurries... and mild ones at that. A few minutes later it stopped.

This morning I woke up and looked outside to check on the weather. I was a little suprised to see that 3 inches of snow had fallen overnight. This is the first time this area has had any accumulation of snow since about 1980. This was really entertaining for me. Here's what the backyard looked like this morning:



Everything was closed. Schools, the University, most stores, shoot... they even closed the Alamo. The drive to work was even more entertaining today than it was on Monday. Everyone was going 5 - 15 mph, white-knuckles and the whole nine yards. Fedex, UPS, and all the other trucking companies weren't running. Interstate 10 was closed. Several local highways were listed as "impassable".

I came home for lunch and made a snow man for the kids. I was going to take a picture of it, but it turned out to be pretty pathetic and so I decided not to embarass myself by recording it. I got a good chuckle when the mail lady pulled up to drop off the mail while I was at home. She had snow chains on her tires. Chains for 3 inches!

I heard some other good ones at work. One person told me that the snow was so deep that she barely made it out of her driveway. Another told me that she couldn't believe how much snow it had "poured" last night. I had one person take the day off because the last time he saw snow he was 5 years old. He wanted to stay home and enjoy it. Two other folks took off after lunch to join him.

Of course, one of the fun things about weather like this down here is reading the weather service announcements and listening to the radio announcers talk about this stuff. The weather announcements say things like "Severe cold", "significant snow", "stay inside", etc. This morning, one of the local radio hosts was lamenting the fact that she reached outside last night to grab her mop off of the back porch and it was frozen solid. She couldn't believe how horribly cold it was. The temperature hadn't been above freezing for 3 whole days.

The whole event has been very entertaining. I just wished it had happened over Christmas.

Fightin' Fires

Our church is about 20 miles south of town in a small west Texas town. On our way to service tonight as we were leaving town we were surprised to see a small grass fire in the ditch along the side of the road. A bunch of vehicles had stopped and people were out there stamping out the fire with their feet and pouring soda on it, or whatever they had in their vehicles. It wasn't a very big fire, maybe 10 foot by 10 foot and the situation looked pretty much under control. All the same, I still called the fire dept as we drove on.

About 10 minutes farther down the road I saw a Roman candle go off in the distance, maybe a mile or so ahead of us. This is very odd because we don't see fireworks often here. They're highly regulated because this part of the state is extremely dry. It's like a giant tinderbox. By the time we arrived where we saw the fireworks, there was a significant brush fire going. One pickup had pulled over. No one else was around, so we stopped to see if there was anything we could do.

I grabbed the big 4 foot floor mat from the back of the van while Anna dialed 911. The guys in the pickup had put the fire out on one side of the road, but it had jumped the road and had burned 50 - 75 feet of the opposite ditch. They told me they didn't think we'd be able to do much. The fire was spreading quickly to the fence line and a big stand of mesquite trees on the other side. I ran across the road and began to smother the fire with the floor mat. (It's the big heavy, rubber all weather type.) This worked surprisingly well, probably due to the fact that Anna was back in the van praying the fire would go out. It didn't take too long to stop the fire from spreading further south. The wind was blowing north pretty good, and the fire was still spreading that direction, with some pretty good sized flames licking the top of the fence posts. By this time the guys in the pickup realized that we might have a chance at putting it out and jumped in to help. It took us several more minutes to get the rest of it, and a few fence posts had been lit up really well. The mat got pretty hot and I think it's ruined, but we put out the fire, saved the fence, and kept it from spreading to some innocent rancher's pasture. That was a pretty good feeling.

After we had the fire mostly out, the guys told me that they had been driving down the road when some idiot in front of them tossed a roman candle out the window right in front of them and basically fire-bombed the ditch. About this time, the Sheriff pulled up and we told him what happened. He took off about 100 mph down the road and was soon followed by two deputies. I went back to the van and realized that we still had 6 minutes to make it to church on time. I wreaked pretty bad, but we went ahead and went. After we cracked a few jokes about being baptized with fire, we had a really good service.

Curious George

Tori just announced that she is getting married.

"Really?" I replied.

"Yes, in my dress."

"Who are you going to marry?"

Without missing a beat she fired back at me. "Curious George".

Hawk and Small Deer Commentary

So, yesterday morning I got up and went for a run. When I came home, I noticed a very large hawk perched in a mesquite tree across the alley. I grabbed the camera and tried to get close enough to get a good picture of him. Alas, I was unsuccessful in sneaking up on him, and he flew off before I got close enough to get a decent picture. I did get this one, from a distance:



When I came inside Hope asked to see the pictures I had taken. I showed her the picture of the hawk and explained what it was she looked up at me and said, "Did you kill that too, like the deer?"

-----

Incidentally, Trevor gave me a hard time about my deer. I believe he said something like, "They can only get bigger in the future." Take a look at the picture above. That's typical central Texas country side. What do you see for the deer to eat? We don't have corn fields down here. Deer eat cactus, grass, mesquite trees, and pecans. They don't get very big. I'm proud of my deer, even if it is puny.

First Deer

I've wanted to go deer hunting on and off for several years, but I've never had the opportunity to do so. This year, I've been blessed with some folks who have invited me to come hunt with them. This afternoon, I took my first deer - a midsized doe. Here's a picture:

Honey Do List: Conquered.

This is a historic moment. My "Honey Do List" is officially empty for the first time in I can't remember when.

I completed the last two items on the list today which were:

1) Replace Furnace Filter
2) Fix Fridge Water line

The first one was easy. The second one was annoying. The water line to our Fridge is attached to the back via a 1/4 inch compression fitting. The copper tube was fixed to the back of the fridge with a clamp to keep it from recoiling against the fridge. However, the Fridge broke a few months ago. Yes, my less than one year old Amana had a compressor failure. So, we had a loaner for a while. When the appliance people returned our old Fridge they failed to hook the clamp back up to the back of the fridge. This became really annoying, because every time you filled up a glass of water when the water would stop the copper pipe would recoil and hit the back of the Fridge making a clunky sound. This also happened every time something happened to put back pressure on the line, like flushing a toilet. So, every time anyone flushed the toilet, the fridge would make a light "clunk". Annoying, but not the end of the world, so I put it off.

Today, when I went to fix this problem, I realized there was a side effect. Every time the pipe recoiled, it put additional pressure on the compression fitting at the wall valve. Over time, this loosened the fitting and it leaked a drop of water every time it recoiled. I took everything apart and discovered that the copper pipe was worn from all the recoil and also had been crimped. Finally, I noticed that the brilliant plumber hadn't bothered to put any pipe tape on the threads either. If he'd done this it probably wouldn't have leaked. Anyway, the good news is that there is a plastic catch basin in the wall and the floor is laminate, so there was no damage from the water. I went to Home Depot and got a reinforced plastic supply line with pre-installed valves for $7.50. Incidentally, buying the parts and using the el-cheapo plastic hose would have cost over $10.00. Go figure. Anyway, I got it installed (with pipe tape on the threads) and now it's fixed. No leaking and no more annoying noises coming from the Fridge when you flush the toilet in the middle of the night.

WOOO HOOO. No more Honey Do list for me!!!! Yeah!

Wait.... What's this??????? Anna is walking towards the Fridge with a pen.... No!!!

Don't do it honey!!!!

ARGH.

Guess I lied.

Wax

Every now and again, something happens that reminds me how small Brownwood really is. A few weeks ago, I woke up and I couldn't hear out of my right ear. This happens occasionally to me. Apparently, excessive ear wax production runs in my family. Go figure.

So, not wanting to wait several days for a normal doctor appointment, I grabbed the phone book and looked up "Urgent Care". They were able to get me right in.

When I showed up at the office I soon realized that the 80 something receptionist was the doctor's Mom. I thought it was nice of the Doc to employ her Mom. Besides, she was a nice lady and chit-chatted with me while I waited.

A few minutes later I was taken back to an exam room where the Doc looked at my ear briefly and declared, "Yup, you got a load of wax in there. I'll be right back."

I expected her to return in a few minutes with one of those Welch Allyen ear cleaner thingies that shoots water into your ear and also has a vacuum line so it simultaneously blasts the wax out and sucks it up. Instead, she return pushing a metal cart covered with a cloth. she pulled back the cloth and I stared in horror at a row of surgical tools. Things to poke you with, a small syringe, a medium syringe, and a syringe that was larger than my forearm.

What happened next is something I can't really even begin to describe. Water and hydrogen peroxide where loaded into the mega-syringe. This was thrust into my ear and a torrential burst of water was propelled into my ear canal. Then, another tool would be used to poke at the wax and scrape some away. This was fairly painful. The Doc was fairly sympathetic, but continued on. This went on for almost an hour until finally the last stubborn glob of wax relented and came out.

Meanwhile, during the hour torture session I learned all about the Doc's goat farm.

When the Doc rolled in the cart full midevil tools a part of me wanted to return to my primal Flight or Fight instincts. I should have listened to myself. It would have been morally and legally reprehensible to fight off a Doctor and her 80 + year old mother. Listen to your instincts when they tell you to FLEE!

Footnote: This really wasn't a completely terrible experience. Admittedly, it hurt, but I survived. And my ear is all better. I now use Debrox every two weeks to keep them all clean. Anyhow... if you thought this was funny..... just wait for Part II. Coming soon.... Ear Wax, Part Deux.

Riding the wind

I've heard about Texas wind and dust storms and all that stuff. I really don't think that Texas wind is any worse than the midwest. Until last night.

A cold front rushed in from the north at break-neck speed, moving 50 - 60 MPH. About 11:00 PM, just as I was getting into bed, the wind began to howl. A lot. This was made somewhat worse by the fact that our roof is in the process of being reshingled from the May baseball hail storm. A lot of stuff started blowing around, including my wife's plants. I decided to move the plants into the garage so they wouldn't tip over and get ruined. So, I opened the garage door and stepped outside to grab the plants, which are in pots about 5 feet from the door.

It felt like I was stepping into a sand blaster. Dust and stuff was blowing all over the place. I quickly grabbed the plants and let the wind blow me back into the garage. After closing the door my ear began to itch. I reached up to scratch it and realized that my left ear and canal where coated in dust and sand. I'd been outside for about 10 seconds.

The howling and blowing and fence creaking and stuff hitting the house kept me up until almost 2 AM. During this time, I had plenty of time to contemplate all sorts of things. I think I finally understand why Texans build predominantly brick and stone homes and often use heavy metal roofs.

This morning was fun too. Riding a motorcycle into 55 MPH winds is a bit like riding a bucking horse while someone else is trying to push you off from the front. What's interesting is that when you're going 70 MPH into a 55 MPH headwind the wind is so loud that you can't hear the roar of the engine beneath you. The bike wants to go everywhere except for where you want it to go, and the wind buffetting will make a man out of you. Yee haw!

NASCAR

If you are a Muslim, at some point in your life you must make a pilgrimage to Mecca, provided you have the financial means to do so. If you live in Texas, at some point, you must visit the Texas Motor Speedway. NASCAR is nearly a religion here.

There happens to be a race at Texas Motor Speedway this weekend, and our company sponsored NASCAR team was kind enough to bring a car to work today so we could all stare at it. I thought it was pretty neat to see. For some of my co-workers, it was nearly a religious experience.

The most interesting thing to me was how loud the car is. One of our safety engineers was outside measuring the noise level. At idle, it's 105 DB. When revving the engine, it's about 125 DB. It was loud enough that standing 15 ft from the car, you could feel the sound waves pulsing against your chest. To put that in perspective, the maximum volume of an iPOD is 115 DB. Each increase of 10DB represents a doubling of sound volume. So, 126 DB is a little more than TWICE the maximum volume that an iPOD can drive a set of earphones. Unreal.

After work I ran home and got Anna and the girls so they could see it too. Here's a picture of Hope with the car. Unfortunately, Tori refused to stop running around long enough to have her picture taken.

New Sam's Club Catalog

ahhh... Sam's club. The place where we go to buy sugar in 50lb sacks, pickles in 5 gallon jugs, he-man sized bottles of ketchup, and batteries by the hundreds. Buy in Bulk! Huzzah!

Generally speaking, the people I see shopping at Sam's are in the "buy in bulk" crowd. Ranchers buying a bunch of food, people toting around 5-8 kids pushing two or three shopping carts, and parents of toddlers buying crates of batteries. In case you're wondering, I fall into the last category.

Today I got a new Sam's club holiday catalog. I browsed through it looking for Christmas ideas for my wife, but alas, most of the fare offered was ostensibly out of my price range. For example, the first page advertises a Cessna Citation Mustang... yup.. a private Jet. A tad bit pricey at $2,734,600 - but if you have the means, I'd highly recommend it. In case you're actually ready to buy, you have to wire a $275,000 down payment by noon on November 9, 2006, prove that you have the means to purchase the plane, and then wait until around Q4 2007 for delivery. On the plus side, there's no extra charge for leather. Oh... I almost forgot, you have to be 18 to purchase this item.

If that't out of your price range, you might consider this walk-in wine vault. It's only $33,000. Still too much? How about some new Jewelry instead? You can get this lovely Pear Shaped Tanzanite for a scant $27,560.

But who really wants all that stuff anyway? I'd much rather spend money on having an experience. You could go to the super bowl. That package will only run you $71,000, but does include an invitation to Dan Marino's private party.

Not a sport's fan? How about Tony Bennett? See him in concert, meet him backstage, and get his autograph for only $44,000.




Sheesh... and I thought I was part of the middle class. Hello.

Golf

I'm way behind on my blogging. Sigh. I've been real busy lately.


While we were in Branson, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to improve my golf game. I played 117 holes while I was there. I played an 18 hole course 6 times and a 9 hole course once. By the time I left, I was really feeling a lot better about my game.

Here's a shot of me making a difficult putt:



And the result?

The Fly Swatter

So here we are getting ready for bed. I'm working on a presentation that I'm giving on Wednesday and talking to Anna. A noisy fly keeps buzzing around the room and driving us nuts.

"That thing is driving me crazy! Can you go kill it?"

So Anna sets down her tea, walks into the other room, and returns with the fly swatter in hand. She gracefully walks across the room and swings the fly swatter once, pegging the fly in mid-flight.

What a woman!

Ok, back to my presentation now.....

Cough Safe

It's the time of year again. Cold and Flu season are just around the corner. Now's probably a good time to brush up on your coughing and sneezing technique. If you have 5 minutes run over to http://www.coughsafe.com and watch their video tutorial on the proper technique for coughing. Informative and absolutely hilarious. This one really made my day. Thanks Deb!

Team Hoyt

The other day, one of my sisters sent me the following email. It was really good, so I thought I'd post it on my blog. When you're done reading it, check out the video on YouTube. Also, you can check out their website at http://www.teamhoyt.com

Strongest Dad in the World From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars—all in the same day. Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right? And what has Rick done for his father? Not much—except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. “He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life,” Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.” But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told. “There's nothing going on in his brain.”

"Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!”

And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.” Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.” That day changed Rick's life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!'' And that sentence changed Dick's life.

He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. “No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then; they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?” How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.” And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn't been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would've died 15 years ago.” So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland,Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day. That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy. “The thing I'd most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad would sit in the chair and I would push him once.''

Here's the video....