Weekend's ROCK!

My, how time flies when you're having fun. 

Today it's a cool, cloudy, very quiet early Sunday morning in 'da hood....

....but yesterday we took Luke the Wonder Dog to Clyde Warren Park in downtown Dallas, a first for him.

There were sights and sounds and smells (and tastes) he'd never experienced before.  I think he enjoyed himself.

We had a great selection of food trucks to choose from:  I ate off The Butcher's Son....2 brisket/jalapeno, 1 cluck fillet sliders....sorry, too good to stop and take pictures of, while K had a Ruben grilled cheese off another "roach coach".  (Not really, they're super clean!)  For the record, Luke preferred my brisket. 

We wore Luke out!  On the way home he curled up in K's lap and passed out.  Back home I gave him a bath as he was overdue anyway, plus being on the streets of downtown Dallas.... 

I even gave K a haircut (yes, another skill set on my resume) and sent her to the showers, too.  Then I hosed myself down also and settled in to an evening of college football.  :)

Today it's Starbucks for a coffee and a read, then a trip to *gulp* Toys R Us to do the grand-kidlette's Christmas shopping.  Better now than DECEMBER 10th, right?  I think there's a small art show somewhere, too.  I'll have to Sherlock Holmes that.

But my sacrifice will all be rewarded when this evening I'll grill us some beautiful prime steak fillets I purchased from David's Meats yesterday.  Good times!

S

Cloud fell down

Saturday recap:  Texas Tech lost, Northampton won, the Plano festival was a let down, but last night we had a helluva storm, complete with a fantastic lightning show and loud claps of thunder....so cool!

Then this morning I looked outside to find this:

Cloud fell down.

It just feels like autumn today.  Some days this would be the last thing you'd want to see, but today it just feels right.  Now and then I like a day when everything just slows down a few notches.  

Stay-at-home church on the internet, a leisurely breakfast, maybe a trip to Starbucks later for a latte and some quality time with the newspaper and some people watching.  (They have some interesting types come in there.)  I might even check out the Felon Football League for a while.  That's my day.  

CORRECTION:  I've just been informed my presence has been requested at IKEA sometime today, too.  

S

Living the good life

This morning it was 65 degrees with a slight breeze and lots of sunshine.  Yesterday's rain cleaned the air and it smells wonderful.  I put on sweats and sat on my 3rd floor terrace and enjoyed my little bottle of Fourbucks frappuccino and watched Luke the Wonderdog watching the other dogs parading by him below.  Life is good.

While most of my contemporaries might look down on the idea of apartment living after decades of home ownership, for me this is bliss.  Not too much, not too little.  Juuuuust right.  And in this price range my neighbors are all mature, quiet, often middle aged or even empty nesters like me.  My to-do list for today reads....not a damn thing.  Same as it was last weekend, and the same as it will be next weekend.

One view of our 21' x 37' Great Room.

We live in Frisco, a far-northern Dallas suburb known for it's citizenry walking around with their noses shoved up into the stratosphere.  The main residential area of town where all the snooties live in their huge mansions is several miles north of where I am.  My neighbors are more down to earth, though, many of them engineers and managers and such working at all the high tech firms surrounding me.

I must give K credit....her insistence on a terrace was spot on.  Ours is just large enough for a couple of nice chairs and 2 small tables, which is perfectly adequate.  There is some traffic noise at certain hours, but from the inside we hear nothing.  I actually like watching the traffic....there are lots of cool cars here.  Our view looking northwest to northeast:

That open field is where Dallas Cowboy's owner Jerry Jones will soon build his tribute to himself.

New office parks are going up everywhere.

AT&T and T-Mobil both have large campuses nearby.

Lots of hotels are nearby, too, I suppose to accommodate all the techies brought in to work on special projects.

Less than a mile east is a HUGE shopping mall, just south are lots more "apartment homes" and condos, and west is a very large high-rise office park.  The Dallas North Tollway one block west connects me straight to the airport (W)  and downtown (S).  Two floors below is a "salon and spa".  And apparently no one ever cooks at home judging by the fact there are literally a hundred nice restaurants within a 2 mile radius.

Now that we're moved in and settled (again), I must say I think I've found where I'm meant to be.*  :)

S

* Unless I win the lottery.  Then you'll find me in Colorado, zip code TBD.

Hey buddy, can you spare a coupla thousand?

Is this real or just a remake of Revenge of the Nerds?  So far cyber-attacks have been just probing jabs looking to see if the perps actually have the capability to mess us up.  Will they soon go for the jugular?

A couple of days ago cyber-attackers shut down JP Morgan Chase's (I think it was JPMC) customer accounts for a few hours, meaning customers couldn't get to their money.  A few hours is no big deal, but what if that had been for several days or even several weeks?

I rarely have enough cash on me to buy a cuppa coffee at Fourbucks.  I pay my bills online and use my debt card for purchases around town.  If my bank's computers turned turtle for more than a few hours I'd probably be on the corner with a tin cup begging for lunch money.

I think I'll pull out a few hundred bucks at least and keep it under my mattress.  That should at least buy enough kibble to keep us going a while.

Speaking of banks, it looks like the movement to break up the biggest of them is gaining momentum.  Dallas FED President Richard Fischer is rallying support from all quarters to possibly put hard caps on their size.  JP Morgan Chase might soon be three:  JP, Morgan, and Chase.

"Too big to fail" banks will soon be small enough to fail and "Too big to jail" bankers will soon be know as "Inmate 95686532".  It looks like my work here is almost done.  :)

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It seems Catholics have 'em a new Pope.  I kept waiting for the call, but it never came.  I knew I was a long shot at best, considering I'm not Catholic.  That's OK though.  No hard feelings.  In fact, it seems like this guy might be a good one.  He eschewed the traditional Cardinal's mansion in Buenos Aires and instead lived in a small apartment on the outskirts, and rode his bike or took mass transit to work every day.  Even traveling to Rome for this conclave he made the 13 hour flight in a coach airline seat.  (That's coach, not Coach.)  I find that rather refreshing.  

I'd like to see some of our high-flying TV evangelists do some of that.  Ha!  That would definitely qualify as a miracle!

Counting down to the weekend....

S

Damned if I do, damned if I don't

My eyesight sucks.  I've worn glasses since I was a little kid, and later in life tried contact lens, but found them to be more trouble than they were worth.  They were just very uncomfortable, and besides, by then I was totally used to glasses.  And oddly enough, as I'm nearsighted, I sometimes take my glasses off to read if the print is too small.

Then about 8 or 9 years ago (I never did have a good sense of time) I had a series of detached retinas in my left eye....they kept lasering it back on, it kept coming back off.  They finally got that fixed, but the result is I have zero peripheral vision on my left side.

My right eye has gotten substantially stronger to compensate. (Thank you God!)  You learn how to get by.  For example, I put one of those tiny convex (?) mirrors on my driver's side rearview mirror to help me with my blind spot when I drive....so far so good.

A couple months ago I had a spot on the side of my nose (where my eyeglasses rest) removed as it was diagnosed as skin cancer.  The cancer is all gone, but in the process they mucked up the tear duct in my good eye.  GRRR!  What was it Roseanne Roseanna Dana said on SNL?..."It's always something".

Now here's the other side of my conundrum:  I hate carrying stuff around.  Unlike what the late actor Karl Mauldin said in his TV commercial, if it won't fit in my pockets, I DO leave home without it.  "Travel light, freeze at night."  I finally broke down and started carrying sunglasses, which for me was a major concession.

E-readers have been a mixed blessing.  I loved my Kindle, but it was limited.  I wanted to be able to check email and the internet while on the move.  iPhone to the rescue.  Sort of.  It met my requirement of being small and "carryable", but dang that print was tiny!  I mean, you can only stretch/enlarge something so much.

Next, the iPad.  UGH!  Waaaaay too big to tote around.  How about a tablet?  Better....  I bought a Samsung Whizbang III (this was before the iPad mini), and it's worked pretty well.  Still a hassle to carry, but all things considered it could be worse.  Yesterday it was a beautiful day and K and I settled in to a nice table outside Starbucks to drink coffee and read, but the sun's glare off my tablet made reading virtually impossible.  UGH again!

What I need is a screen the size of my gigantic iMac screen that folds in half, then half again, then half again, then half again, and fits in my shirt pocket.  Can any of you really smart geeky-type people help me out here? Invent me one, oh, and dip it in that non-glare stuff, too, while you're at it.  And please hurry....I'm not getting any younger.

S

Come help me re-name some airports....

The BBC headline read, "Baby born on Armenia plane named after stewardess".  The story went on to say the baby was named Hasmik after Hasmik Ghevondyan, who helped deliver her.  Ms. Ghevondyan later modestly recounted how "the whole crew helped deliver the baby."

Two comments:  Apparently political correctness hasn't yet made it to Armenia.  Years ago (before K) I dated a "flight attendant" and I can tell you they are very touchy about being called "stewardesses".

Secondly, if "the whole crew helped deliver the baby", who was flying the friggin' airplane?  I always feel better when my airline keeps one pilot (minimum) up front looking at least a little interested in keeping the wings level and pointed in the right direction.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And in keeping with this post's aviation theme, have you ever thought about airport names?  New York has John F. Kennedy, Washington has Ronald Reagan, Houston has George Bush, New Orleans has Louis Armstrong, OK City has Will Rogers, and even some hole in Pennsylvania has an airport named after their hometown King of Pork, Congressman John Murtha.  

Paris has Charles De Gaulle, Tel Aviv has Ben Gurion, Warsaw has Frederic Chopin, and Istanbul has Mustafa Ataturk Airport.  Now I read  (again via the BBC) that Birmingham, England is considering re-naming their airport Ozzy Osbourne International Airport after the Black Sabbath musician and former resident.

Let me throw another few proposals into the ring:

Dallas/Ft. Worth could re-name their airport JR Ewing International.

  

Seattle's SeaTac could become Starbucks/Howard Schultz International.

Memphis...."The King".  Just The King.

Detroit Metro could become MoTown/Berry Gordy International.  

Las Vegas' McCarran could be re-named the Bugsy Siegel Casino, Wedding Chapel and Elvis Venue.  And Airport. 

Miami could re-name theirs the Ricky Ricardo World SmugglePort.

Newark Liberty could become Joe Pesci International.

Bogata, Colombia's El Dorado could become Juan Valdez International.

Astana, Kazakhstan could re-name their airport Borat Field ('cause, you know, it's just a mowed field).

Rome's Leonardo da Vinci could become the Sophia Loren Fountain of Eternal Youth and World Airport.  (Come on Leonardo....you and Michelangelo have Rome pretty well sewn up.  Share, OK?)

Help me out here.  There's bound to be lots more.  Dazzle me!  ;)

S

If it's cloudy out is it still "Sun day"?

Sunday, to me, is the most awkward day of the week.  Think about it:  Monday through Thursday are just regular work days.  You get up, eat, dress, go to work, blah, blah, blah.  Friday is a bit more special.  You're more likely to go out for a nicer lunch or maybe to an after-work happy hour with friends or co-workers or spousal unit.  

Saturday....ahhh, Saturday....is by a wide margin the most fun day of the week.  Maybe sleep in a while longer, golf or tennis or bike-ride (if that's your thing), a nice lunch or dinner out, the list of possible things to do is virtually unlimited.

Sunday on the other hand is one of those odd, in-between kind of days.  Sunday morning means for many a trip to church (or these days a trip to the 'puter for some online church), the BIG weekly edition of the newspaper, some pro football on TV (if that's your thing), and otherwise just getting yourself ready for that 'ol Monday through Thursday grind thing.  It's not really an all-out fun day like Saturday, but it isn't a work day either.  I take that back....I guess you could say "reflecting" is fun, right?

All I/we have left to do today is visit Starbuck's ("Four bucks") for a fancy coffee and an hours worth of newspaper reading.  Maybe some cow on the grill later.  I dunno.

S

OK, so geography isn't their forte....

BREAKING NEWS:  Apple Maps is projecting Hurricane Sandy will strike California around midnight tonight.  (Seriously, I hope all my friends in the path of that storm come through safely.)

Not much to talk about today.  Yesterday was my day for football....college football in my case.  I had the unpleasant experience of watching my Texas Tech Red Raiders have their head handed to them by Kansas State, 55-24.  Disappointed yes, but surprised, no.  KState is really good.  Solid all the way around, a true Heisman contender at QB, and expertly coached.  They should be #2 in the BCS poll after this weekend, which means they very well could be playing for the national championship in early January.

K and I went to Starbucks for our weekly coffee and read, then went to the mall near our home to just walk around and people watch.  I never tire of people watching.  Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung all had kiosks set up hawking their newest gadgets.  I asked the Samsung guy why my Galaxy Tab(let) 7.0 didn't come with an owners manual?  His response:  *deer in the headlights look*  It seems it's available online, but it's 100+ pages long....no way I'm gonna print it all out.

I want a simple little booklet like every other gadget in the world comes with.  While at the mall I stopped in to Barnes and Noble and found a "How-to" booklet which will answer my basic questions and is dumbed down to something I might understand.  (Wonder if it knows how technologically dumb I really am?)  Wish me luck.

That's enough drivel for now.  Have a nice Sunday evening everyone.

S

"The bigger they come, the harder they fall"

Texas Tech destroys No. 4 West Virginia in huge upset

Tech fans storm the field after hearing free celebratory beer was being served in the end zone under the "Double T" logo.

Did you ever have one of those days where everything went right?  Me either.  But yesterday my Alma mater Texas Tech did when they absolutely annihilated #4 ranked West Virginia, 49-14.  I wish we could have put a few of those points into a Karma account for use against Texas a few weeks from now.

Looks like attending the State Fair isn't going to happen for me this year.  But frankly, other than having an Original Fletcher's Corny Dog and staring at the latest in piercings and tattoo chic up close and personal, there really isn't all that much there for me.  True, I'll miss seeing all the newest pickup trucks on display, as well as the multiple stages set up for performers to entertain us with both kinds of music....country AND western.*  Oh well, there's always next year.

Last night a storm came through (so I'm told....I slept through it) and dropped about an inch of rain on us.  Today the sky is cloudless and blue, the air smells so clean, and the temp is in the 70's.  I'm thinking Luke the Wonder Dog can come with us for our Sunday coffee as we'll be able to sit outside and enjoy this perfect Autumn weather.

Hope you have a fun day planned, too.

S

*sarcasm

Interesting car...er...truck sighting

Seen outside Starbucks this afternoon:

Pretty cool, huh?

Our anniversary dinner....

Tonight K and I have reservations to celebrate our 5-year anniversary at Seasons 52.  It's one of those places that puts just a little bit of food on a great big plate.  *pout*  The good news is that little bit of food is amazing!  I'm going for the filet, and I think K is too as the last time we were there she had the Scottish salmon, but kept eyeing my steak all evening.  Watch, listen, and learn, babe....

That will be us sitting back in the corner by the kitchen.  (Hmmmm, the publicity photo shows decent portion sizes. Maybe my memory failed me.  For once I'm hoping.)

Best of all, it's just a 5 minute walk from our home, and I love walking around our neighborhood, especially on weekends.  The "sights" never cease to entertain/confound me.  You'll see stunningly gorgeous women dressed to the hilt accompanied by guys that look like they were under their car changing the oil just minutes before.  Fashion trends these days just baffle me.  


We've had two days of badly needed rain, and now the sun is coming back out for the weekend.  Perfect!  I still have to work this Sunday afternoon, but then I'll have two consecutive holiday weekends off.  I won't know what to do with myself!  We'll probably go to the mall this Saturday and indulge in a Starbucks, and as we've had all our Christmas shopping complete for well over a month, just sit and stare and laugh at all the panicked people scurrying around fighting over the last of whatever the latest greatest gizmo is this year. Haha!


What's on your weekend agenda?  Something fun I hope.


S

Our kayaking adventure

OK, maybe "adventure" is a bit too strong.  Today K and I went to White Rock Lake in Dallas and rented a couple of kayaks for an hour to just try 'em out.  It was great fun, and I was surprised how quickly K took to it.  She's a natural:

Me....not as much.  These rental kayaks were absolutely ragged out and old, too.  (I think I saw "Jesus" carved in mine.)  My problem was the seat back: it caught me about 3 inches above my waist, right in the small of my back.  And the padding was so old it literally fell off the frame, so whenever I pushed back in my seat for paddling leverage the raw plastic cut into my lower back.  Ouch!  Overall I enjoyed it, but....

Back home I went on the internet and looked up "kayak seats" and found this:

Now I know I can continue to rent for a while longer and get a bit more into kayaking, and when the day comes I'm ready to buy one I can purchase an aftermarket seat for it and cruise in comfort.  :)

Coffee and a bit of reading at Starbucks later in the afternoon rounded out our day.  What did you do today?

S

A redneck kind of day

It was also a "do anything you possibly can to stay cool" day, too.  This morning we slept late ;) then went to Starbucks and had a coffee (her) and a frappaccino (me) while we read the Sunday Times.  Then we decided to go visit the new Cabelas that opened recently in Allen, TX.  


We were there because it was something to do indoors, but I think for everyone else it was "redneck" day.  We did look at kayaks because that's something we might someday pursue, but otherwise we were just trying to stay cool.  I did see this OTT den recliner, but for some reason K objected:

I'm thinking with a brass spittoon beside it and one of those talking fish mounted on the wall behind, it could make a powerful Architectural Digest statement, don't you?

We survived the 104 degree heat and are back home now.  I'm baking K's birthday cake (don't be too impressed....it's out of a box) and enjoying a margarita, and later I'm going out to grill hamburgers, sausage, hot dogs, and whatever else I can find to scorch.  

There will be some fireworks just up the road at the ballpark (after the baseball game that I turned down tickets to), and we might go up on our rooftop parking deck and check them out.  Or not.  TBD.

Hope y'all are having a nice weekend.  :)

S