It’s brother David’s fault

 

 

Remember when Bott’s Dots first came out?  Those galump bumps they put on the white lines of highways, so you’ll notice when you stray out of your lane.  Well, David was old enough to drive and I was not yet.  While driving with him one day, he casually mentioned, and demonstrated, the challenge of changing lanes on the highway without hitting any of the bumps with any of the wheels.  It’s not that hard, but you have to time it just right, and you want to be subtle enough that other people in the car probably don’t even notice you’re doing it.  Well, from that offhand comment way back then, and that would be in the early 1960s, I have forever been conscious of whether or not I hit those bumps when changing lanes.  I don’t have to miss all the bumps every time I change lanes, but I’m always conscious of whether I do or not.

 

 

South Texas heat

 

 

The lantana is enjoying this weather.

 

 

As is the firebush.

 

 

Earworm

 

 

Not that big a Fleetwood Mac fan.  They’re okay, but not the music I want to listen to all day every day.  No idea why my head would pick them.  Sure be glad when this particular song vacates.

 

 

She came home!

 

 

 

 

Pipevine Swallowtail

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got to wondering

 

 

How many birds are still out there when it’s too hot to be out there?

 

I decided to give it a test.  I drove to a county outside of my normal range.  Frio County, south and west of San Antonio.  The biggest city in Frio County is Pearsall, population less than 10,000.  There are a few other towns in Frio County, but not many.  Most of them don’t have stoplights.

 

Not much in the way of birding hotspots.  I looked on google earth ahead of time and picked out a few places that looked like they might have birds though.  I got to a spot outside Pearsall before dawn, parked at the side of a dirt backroad for the morning chorus, and started counting the birds I could hear.  I picked a place with no houses around so I wouldn’t bother anyone when I played a few bird calls out loud to encourage any silent birds, birds that are normally only active at night, to say something.  The great horned owl call worked.  Two of them answered.  I heard a pauraque.  It was hard to hear anything else for the cardinals and mocking birds, but I managed to pick out a few. A whistling duck flew over.

 

Moving quickly, I drove back into Pearsall to a cemetery in the morning light.  That time from before dawn to about 9am is most precious.  It’s the morning chorus, the time that birds tend to be their most vocal and active.  Found some doves.  Purple martins and a chimney swift.  Moved to a city park.  Scissor-tailed flycatchers and western kingbirds.  Moved on to the fishing pond.  More birds.  Common ground doves and a yellow-billed cuckoo.

 

After nine or so the birding slows down, and the weather warms up, so I spent more time in the car and toured the entire county to make sure I covered all the different kinds of habitat available, getting out to walk around and check out each promising spot.  It turns out the habitat doesn’t change much in Frio County.  Scrubby brushy ranchland.  It’s the parks and cemeteries in the little towns that have the big trees and bushes that are attractive to a lot of birds.

 

I proved it was pretty hot out for birds.  It was pretty hot out for me.  It was 114 degrees at 4pm when I called off the count for the day.  Hadn’t seen a new bird in the last couple hours.  By scouring Frio County from dawn to hot afternoon, I totaled 52 species.  Yup, it’s too hot to be out there, but the birds still are.  I had left the air conditioning set on 80 degrees in the house.  It felt cold inside when I got home, so I turned it up.

 

We moved to the Carroll Park house in 1954

 

 

It was a nice house for us.  Big yard but we didn’t have to mow the lawn.  We had a Japanese gardener.  His name was Kaz.  Dark skin.  His hands looked tight and smooth, like dark leather.  That’s what I remember about him most, his hands.

 

As a single-digit boy, I used to follow Kaz around and talk to him.  I remember him being pleasant enough, but he didn’t say much.  Never volunteered anything.  Answered questions but never asked them.  I guess he wouldn’t make a lot of conversation with an 8 or 9 year-old boy though.

 

The time I’m remembering was less than 10 years after World War II, and now it occurs to me to wonder if being a Japanese gardener is what Kaz aspired to.  Had he always been a Japanese gardener or is there a chance he got stuck into a stereotype.  Did he used to do something else before the war and that option was no longer available to him, and he quietly filled the role that was still accessible.  So many stories and possibilities of other people’s lives that we’ll never know.

 

With Judy gone

 

This is how we spend our day; waiting at the front window for her return.

 

 

Success!

 

 

The ultimate test to see if the sleeping bags have been successfully decontaminated would be to sleep in one, right?  So here it is, ready for a good night’s sleep, on top of our bed at home last night.

 

And today the results are in.  Success!  The sleeping bag wasn’t annoying at all.  Very comfortable.  A little warm for inside the house, but comfortable again.

 

Judy doesn’t have to be subjected to this part of our drama.  She’s off visiting family in Southern California.  Barbara and Susie.  Vista and Riverside.

 

I think I’m so cool

 

 

…drinking my three 18-ounce bottles of water every day.

 

But Judy’s kidney doctor says to divide your pounds of bodyweight in half and drink that much in ounces.  Bummer.  I’m only drinking 54 ounces of water, and my target is 80.  80!  That’s more than a half-gallon!.  I could do that once, no problem, but two and a half quarts of water, that’s an awful lot of water to get down every single day!

 

 

And one more photo of Henry

 

 

Henry the waterdog.

 

 

Sleeping bags

 

 

We were just doing what we were supposed to do.  We had used the sleeping bags for several trips, so we decided to wash them.  The tags on the bags said to take them to a laundromat so we could use their commercial size machines.  That makes sense.  Don’t want to fill up a residential size machine so tight that they won’t rinse out well.  We left the bags with the proprietor of a laundromat to wash and dry for us.  We picked them up the next day.

 

What we didn’t think to do was specify “no fragrance”.  I don’t know why the default setting for so many people is to add fragrance to things that aren’t naturally fragrant, but when we got the sleeping bags back, we couldn’t stand to be in the same room with them.

 

Time to mitigate.  We opened them up and spread them out on chairs on the deck to let them air out for a week.  That barely made a dent.  We put them in our own non-commercial size washer and ran each one through a full wash cycle, but without any soap so there wouldn’t be any problem getting it all rinsed out in our non-commercial size machine.  We put them back out to dry and air out for another week.  Better, but still a long way to go.  We started washing them, one at a time, each with an unscented tide pod, then running each one through another full wash cycle with no soap to be sure they got a complete rinsing.  Several times.

 

The situation is much improved.  For the last several days I’ve been able to walk past them on the deck and not notice any fragrance.  Time to bring them inside for a few days and see if they survive the sniff-test in a more enclosed area.

 

 

Sometimes

 

 

Sometimes it’s not about eating the chewies.

 

It’s about having both the chewies.

 

(And all the balls.)

 

And in today’s weather news

 

 

It’s fricking hot!

 

Triple digits as far out as we can see.

 

Way hotter than average.  Even hotter than ever before.

 

Feels-like temperatures nearing 120 degrees.

 

We can still go outside and do things, but we limit it to 20 minute stints in the sun.

 

The wedding

 

 

We got to virtually attend our niece Elisa and Solomon’s wedding, by means of WhatsApp on our little telephone screens.

 

People from Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Colorado, Sweden (or was it Switzerland), Columbia, and Ghana!  It might have been a little late in the day in England for Taylor.

 

Maybe a little blurry, but a wonderful happy time.

 

 

Happy Birthday Henry!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thirteen years today.

 

 

And this

 

 

 

 

This is a lark sparrow.

 

 

Can you spot the Christmas ornament on this tree?

 

 

 

Ha.  It’s a painted bunting!

 

Can you spot the roadrunner in this tree?

 

 

 

Trick question.  It’s a northern bobwhite!  (quail)

 

 

More backroads traffic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can you spot the

 

 

…roadrunner in this picture?

 

 

 

Judy just read an article

 

 

The average wedding now costs $29,000.

 

That makes us reflect on our own wedding.  One week of planning.  Judy’s brother Earl bought her a wedding dress.  (Judy weighed 98 pounds.  Nobody had wedding dresses for kids, so he bought her a cocktail dress at House of Nine and they modified it.)  I went to rent a tux, and at 120 pounds they didn’t have anything close to fitting me and couldn’t do any alterations in less than a week, so I wore my Army dress uniform.  Bill and Diane worked out the venue.  Diane had a friend who did this sort of thing and found us a local chapel we could use.  And a church official to preside.  I suspect they covered the cost of this.  I don’t remember paying anyone for it.  I might have been unaware.  Judy walked down the aisle.  I remember that.  We each proclaimed “I do”, one of us softly and the other forcefully.  For the photos after, the photographer called for Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, and it didn’t register.  We thought they were starting with my mom and dad.  There was rice.  John Duncan, the Best Man, my friend from my last duty assignment, provided the car for the getaway and drove us back to my house.  We changed clothes and Judy and I headed straight off on our honeymoon with a drive north along the coast, east through Yosemite Valley, and back south down the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Range, making up places to stop as we went.  We were limited on time because I only had a 30 day leave before I reported for duty at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.  Brother Tom loaned us his car for the honeymoon.  Dad gave us his Chevron gas credit card.  We walked into a restaurant in Santa Barbara for dinner the first night with no reservations.  They asked us if it was our prom.  We had prime rib.  After dinner we inquired at a hotel, without reservations, and they not only found us a room, but upgraded it to the honeymoon suite.  That’s how our honeymoon went.  Bolstered by the kindness of stangers.

 

We had the wedding reception at Mom and Dad’s house a week later when we returned home.  The wedding cake was a sheet cake.  Judy’s mom bought it.  We paid $50 for the wedding pictures.  It would have cost $75 to have them in color and that seemed extravagant, so our pictures are forever in black and white.

 

So, come to think of it, I only remember spending $50 on our wedding, thanks to the kindness of family.  I suspect altogether it cost less than the average cost now of $29,000.

 

Some people have all the fun

 

 

 

Stopping for a burger while driving down the road with helicopters!

 

I want a helicopter!

 

 

Solar cars

 

 

They’re out there right now.  Well, maybe not in the U.S. but in other parts of the world.  It’s a little early in the technology, but they’re coming.  Battery electric cars with solar panels to augment their range. Aptera.  Fisker.  Sono Motors.  Mercedes Benz.  They’re all working on them.

 

Aptera claims a combined range, solar and plug-in, of 1,000 miles for its car that’s almost in production.

 

But imagine an order of magnitude improvement in battery technology.  An order of magnitude improvement in solar technology.  That will happen in a few years (or decades).  Put them together on cars and one day we’ll be looking back saying “Remember when you had to stop and put fuel in a car?”  We’ll be driving whenever we want and as far as we want, without ever stopping to fuel up.  There will still need to be convenience stores along the highway so we can stock up on Krispy Kremes though.

 

A bad traffic day

 

 

 

 

 

 

But it cleared.