Incoming Parental Units Heading To Texas

I've confirmed my Mom and Dad are locked and loaded and ready to head this way early Sunday morning. They are currently scheduled to get here early Tuesday. They have a history of arriving earlier than scheduled. If they show up late Monday, they'll find me hard to find.

That's my Mom and Dad in the picture, from last summer, up in Skagit County, north of Seattle, at Bay View State Park. That is my Grand Nephew, Spencer Jack and his Mom, Jenny between my Mom and Dad.

I got Mom and Dad a Texas type Xmas present. If they are cooperative I'll, later, show you what that is. I don't know how cooperative they will be regarding letting me take video of their visit. Likely, that will prove difficult. Mom has trouble seeing. Maybe she won't notice the video camera.

I can find no Christmas wrapping type paper in this place. Would butcher paper suffice? I'm known for very tacky wrapping.

I don't have any chores for my Mom and Dad to do here. No raspberries to can, no holes to dig, no cars to fix. When you stay at my sister's in Tacoma you are given a daily Chore List, first thing in the morning. She runs a very strict house. You are not allowed to move on until your particular chores are checked off and approved as being properly completed.

It was hell for me, hell, I tell you. I'd never experienced anything like it. I don't know where my sister learned to be such a militaristic taskmaster. It certainly wasn't from my dear saint-like Mommy.

Anyway, my windows are currently open. It is a very nice warm Texas winter day. Tomorrow a big chill blows in. And then my Mom and Dad.

Below is video taken the same day as the above picture. You'll see my Mom and Dad (and me) meet Spencer Jack for the first time.

Clear Lake Penguin Dip

I am up early. Again. Though not quite as early as yesterday. This morning's early wakeup came after 4.

I'm being cranky right now because Fort Worth is still keeping my pool closed. It is 65 outside right now. It was warm yesterday. My pool water is likely a somewhat swimmable temperature. Certainly, more so than the last time I got in it.

My closed pool became a current issue this morning while reading my old hometown newspaper, online, that being the Skagit Valley Herald. There was an article, with pictures and video, of the New Year's Day 18th Annual Clear Lake Penguin Dip.

Clear Lake is only a couple miles from where I used to live, in Mount Vernon. My nephew, Joey, lives in Clear Lake. I don't know if Joey was a Penguin dipper. My longtime reader may remember me blogging about Clear Lake last August, when Clear Lake was the site of the infamous Mannequin Murders.

About 100 men, women and kids ran into the 34 degree Clear Lake, when a Countdown Clock reached zero. Apparently there was a lot of screaming and shrieking when the Penguin Dippers hit the water.

There were 2 large bonfires on shore to warm the Penguin Dippers, after they quickly got back out of Clear Lake.

The Clear Lake Penguin Dip began in 1990. I had no awareness of this event when I lived there. I suspect I would not have participated had I known

Buzzworms in the Backyard: Strikes Again!---Next Friday Night

An exhibition of visual art protesting irresponsible gas drilling

Gala Opening Reception
January 9, 2009
Fort Worth Community Arts Center
1300 Gendy Street
6 - 9 pm

Featuring Live performance art by:

Tammy Gomez & Friends
and
Lori Thomson & Laney Yarber

Refreshments provided

Don't miss it!

I'm sure I won't....I'll bring Mom & Dad

Dallas Trinity River Corridor Project & Fort Worth Trinity River Vision

It is strange, now, getting my Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex news from the Dallas Morning News, rather than the Fort Wort Star-Telegram. I've learned of all sorts of interesting things going on in the Dallas zone that I did not know about from reading the Star-Telegram.

Like a huge new arts complex (was it opera?) going up in what Dallas calls its Arts District. I find that way less pretentious sounding than Fort Worth's Cultural District.

And there is a very cool new bridge about to open, spanning across Lake Lewisville.

But the most interesting thing I've read in the Dallas paper, that is pretty much ignored in the Fort Worth paper, is the progress Dallas is making with their Trinity River Corridor Project.

The gestation of the 2 town's river projects is interesting. The vision came first to Dallas. If I remember right, originally it was called The Trinity River Vision Project. The plan was to turn a huge flood plain into a lake with recreational amenities. That has grown to being quite more complex and interesting.

A few years after Dallas had its vision, Fort Worth had one of its own. Fort Worth's started off being called, quite simply, "Town Lake." But as the vision grew clearer, Fort Worth figured out it needed a way to scam Federal dollars. And it was renamed "The Trinity River Vision." So, Dallas changed its projects name to "Dallas Trinity River Corridor Project." Soon Fort Worth's vision will likely become "Fort Worth Trinity River Corridor Project." After which, Dallas will change its name again. It's a vicious cycle here, between these two towns.

So, the Town Lake was overshadowed by the suddenly necessary, "River Diversion Channel," to prevent a flood, the likes of what happened in the early 50s, that the Army Corps of Engineers already fixed with massive dikes along the flood zone. So, Town Lake grew from a little lake to a lake with canals and a diversion channel. This required 3 new bridges. Just like Dallas.

Of course, the Fort Worth bridges are smaller than the Dallas bridges and cost way less.

It is pretty easy to see where the Fort Worth Vision may go blind during the likely upcoming period where the Feds get a bit more picky about handing out bucks to bridges that go nowhere. Or River Diversion Channels where none is needed.

Meanwhile, over at the official website of the Dallas Trinity River Corridor Project I found some of the type verbiage that made me cringe when I read it in the Fort Wort Star-Telegram. As in this Dallas project is "the most complex and the largest urban development effort undertaken by the city and it will make Dallas the envy of other large cities..."

Maybe it is a Texas thing. "Envy of." "Green with Envy." However, looking at the info about the Dallas Trinity Corridor Project and all that has already been done and what the goal is, I'm thinking that this Project is going to amp up Dallas' coolness and Dallas is already pretty darn cool.

For those of you who know Dallas, only through J.R. Ewing, well, you know the opening credits of Dallas, where you swoop across an open area and head to downtown Dallas with Reunion Tower standing tall? Well, that open area is the zone of the Trinity Corridor Project. Picture the opening of Dallas now, swooping across a series of lakes, forests of trees, trails and 3 unique bridges designed by internationally acclaimed architect, sculptor and engineer, Santiago Calatrava.

I really like what I've seen of the bridge designs. The first bridge is supposed to soon be under construction.

Meanwhile, here in Fort Worth, the vision continues. So far, near as I can tell, it involves using Eminent Domain to tear down some businesses. I don't know when a Town Lake is going to destroy Fort Worth's historic confluence of the West and Clear Forks of the Trinity River.

Texas Insomnia & Other Woes

New Year's Day I went to bed fairly early. Which caused me to get up fairly early. As in a bit past 2 this morning. Consequently I'm feeling punch drunk, like I've been on the road, driving non-stop for 24 hours and in dire need of a motel room.

I got up, made coffee, with it being hours before the Dallas Morning New would arrive. I finished reading Hollywood Kryptonite. That's the book that makes the case that George Reeves (Superman) was murdered, rather than a suicide. The Ben Affleck movie, Hollywoodland, with he playing Reeves, is based on this book.

Superman killing himself has always bothered me and I really think that is at the root of my extreme distrust of Super Heroes. After reading Hollywood Kryptonite, I'm convinced Reeves was murdered by a hitman ordered up by his jilted girl-friend, Toni Mannix.

I called my Mom early this morning to try and persuade them that waiting a week to come here, rather than leaving this coming Sunday, might be a good idea, due to we are supposed to be getting a cold snap, starting with rain on Monday. I told Mom, the way it goes here, is a few days cold, then back warm again, that by the Sunday after next we should be back in warm times again.

Mom said it would be too much trouble to wait a week, they were already packed, they'd add more cold weather clothes. Where Mom and Dad grew up, in Whatcom County, just south of the Canadian border, they experienced many a blizzard with very cold temperatures, heavy wind and a lot of snow, blowing into big drifts that could cover barns.

No one here in Texas can understand how varied the weather in Washington is. It is so unlike here. Most here think it rains all the time up there. Where Mom and Dad grew up, in Whatcom County, was only 40 miles north of where I grew up, in Skagit County. Whatcom County was in the path of weather systems coming down Canada's Frasier River Valley. As in very cold fronts, meeting up with wet Pacific air, causing massive snowstorm.

Meanwhile, where I lived, we called it The Banana Belt, while my Grandma's were snowbound with huge drifts, we'd have no snow and not even be freezing. Just a few miles to the west of where I lived the land was in the shadow of the Olympics, meaning they were a dry zone with way less rain than those of us living near the Cascades. When the clouds hit the Cascades they'd back up and pour rain on us. But the Olympics block a large area to the west, with some areas getting desert like levels of rainfall, annually.

And then there's the other side of the mountains. You drive over one of the Cascade Passes (you can't right now, closed due to avalanche danger) and you are in a brown Texas-like, albeit it more hilly and way more irrigated, zone. Eastern Washington gets real cold. And has a lot of orchards where they grow all those apples you see in stores here. And apricots, peaches, nectarines, cherries, grapes and all sorts of good stuff.

I take it back. Eastern Washington bears little resemblance to Texas.

So, anyway, Mom and Dad know what a cold winter is like, but they've become Weather Babies, like me. We all shivered in my sister's Iceberg she calls a house, in Tacoma, last summer. But I don't know if they remember what it is like when it is 20 degrees with a 40 mile wind blowing from the north. I expect to hear my Mom do a lot of complaining about the weather. She told me she just won't get out of the car.

I wonder if it is from my Mom I learned the Art of Complaining?

A Texas Home Security System

TO INSTALL A TEXAS HOME SECURITY SYSTEM

1. Go to a secondhand store and buy a pair of used men's work boots, size 14-16.
2. Put them on your front porch, along with a copy of Guns & Ammo magazine.
3. Place a few giant dog dishes next to the boots and magazine.
4. Leave a note on your door that reads:

Hey Bubba,

Big Jim, Duke, Slim, and I went for more ammunition. Back in an hour. Don't mess with the pit bulls - - they attacked the mailman this morning and messed him up real bad. I don't think Killer took part in it, but it was hard to tell from all the blood. I locked all four of 'em in the house. Better wait outside.

Cooter

Eat All The Lard You Want, Stay Thin With Sanitized Tapeworms

In one of the lesser insulting remarks, in a month filled with them, when I was in Tacoma, last year, in what is now known as Hell Summer, one of my relatives suggested the reason I was so skinny, and yet able to eat like a pig, was because I likely had a tapeworm.

I am not kidding. This was the type elevated discourse I was subjected to. No, it couldn't be that I was skinny due to getting sufficient exercise and eating properly. No. I had a tapeworm.

So, this morning Alma, the Songbird of the Texas Gulf Coast, sent me a lot of good stuff. Including old ads. Two of the ads had to do with food. One was a diet method, the other suggested a food that would make you happy.

The diet ad claimed you could Eat! Eat! Eat! and always stay thin. No diet, No baths, no exercise, claiming, Fat, the ENEMY that is shortening your life, BANISHED! How? With Sanitized Tape Worms. Jar packed. Easy to Swallow! No ill effects!

Now, if you get the Sanitized Tape Worms, you could then eat all you want of the other thing advertised, that being LARD. No dieting, no exercise, eat all the lard you want, without the worry of becoming a lard ass.

I can think of a person. Or two. Who I would not mind slipping a Tape Worm. Or two. That person, or two, already eats plenty of lard and, unfortunately already is a lard ass. But the Tape Worm can reverse that condition.

Polar Bear Swimming at Lake Grapevine

It's a nice first day of the new year, here in Texas. I've got my windows open again. It's almost 70. I went up to Lake Grapevine, a bit past noon. I brought along a swimming suit, fully intending to go swimming on the first day of the new year.

But, when I got to Rockledge Park, the wind was blowing, there were waves, I felt the water and it was cold. Getting in the lake would not be as easy as getting in the pool. It doesn't get deep fast, you have to pick your way carefully over the lake bed so as not to step on something unseemly.

So, I chickened out on the swimming thing.

Taking the left turn from Grapevine Highway on to the road that goes over the Lake Grapevine Dam, there was a big group of bikers. I would not ride my bike on these type streets. Bikes and cars and busy highways do not a good mix make, in my opinion.

That's the bikers you see in the picture, above, with the pair of Big Balls in the foreground.

There were a lot of mountain bikers today riding the Northshore Trail out of Rockledge Park. I used to pedal this trail a lot. But it is treacherous in places. And now that I'm a senior citizen I am wary of such risky things.

That is the Gaylord Texas Resort and Convention Center, on the left, that you see rising above Lake Grapevine on the south side of the lake. I'll take my Mom and Dad there when they are here. Which is sooner than I expected, I learned today, when I called my Phoenix sister, while I was at Lake Grapevine.

Lake Grapevine has lost some more water since I was last at today's location. It was fun walking the beach in places where previously that was not possible.

About 2 miles into walking along the beach, there is an inlet that leads to a smaller inlet. During summer, when the vegetation is thick, this is a good skinny dipping spot. In the dead of winter, not so much. But the water was calm there, and it felt warmer. If it had not been so far from my vehicle and the post swimming need for heat, this would have been a good spot for my First of the New Year Polar Bear Swim. Doesn't that look like a big natural swimming pool?

I Am A Senior Citizen

I had a horrible thing happen to me earlier this week that I was too appalled by to mention to you. But, now, this morning, this first day of the new year, Alma, the Songbird of the Texas Gulf Coast, sent me, well, a poem sort of thing, the theme of which, is, well, remembering way back when, in the 1950s, when the world was young and innocent.

So, what was the horrible thing that happened to me? Well, I went to Zorro's Buffet on Monday. You pay when you enter. I said to the pimply-faced teenager, "4 adults." She then asked me a question that forever will be etched in my memory as the mark of the end of an era. She asked me "Senior discount?"

I was mortified. Do I look 60 I asked? Is it my gray hair? She said she always asks if the person has gray hair because sometimes they get upset when they don't get their Senior (one measly dollar off) Discount.

I told the girl I was only 29 with prematurely gray hair and that I was quite offended and felt very insulted. She giggled during this entire painful scene. She did say she thought I was remarkably well-preserved for an elderly person. That made me feel slightly better.

And now the words sent by Alma, with a Senior Citizen lamenting the changing times....

Long ago and far away, in a land that time forgot, before the days of Dylan, or the dawn of Camelot. There lived a race of innocents, and they were you and me.

For Ike was in the White House in that land where we were born, where navels were for oranges, and Peyton Place was porn.

We learned to gut a muffler, we washed our hair at dawn, we spread our crinolines to dry in circles on the lawn.

We longed for love and romance, and waited for our Prince and Eddie Fisher married Liz, and no one's seen him since.

We danced to 'Little Darlin,' and sang to 'Stagger Lee' and cried for Buddy Holly in the Land That Made Me, Me.

Only girls wore earrings then, and 3 was one too many, and only boys wore flat-top cuts, except for Jean McKinney.

And only in our wildest dreams did we expect to see a boy named George with Lipstick, in the Land That Made Me, Me.

We fell for Frankie Avalon, Annette was oh, so nice, and when they made a movie, they never made it twice.

We didn't have a Star Trek Five, or Psycho Two and Three or Rocky-Rambo Twenty in the Land That Made Me, Me.

Miss Kitty had a heart of gold, and Chester had a limp and Reagan was a Democrat. Whose co-star was a chimp?

We had a Mr. Wizard, but not a Mr. T and Oprah couldn't talk yet, in the Land That Made Me, Me.

We had our share of heroes, we never thought they'd go, at least not Bobby Darin, or Marilyn Monroe.

For youth was still eternal, and life was yet to be and Elvis was forever, in the Land That Made Me, Me.

We'd never seen the rock band that was Grateful to be Dead and Airplanes weren't named Jefferson, and Zeppelins were not Led and Beatles lived in gardens then, and Monkees lived in trees, Madonna was a virgin in the Land That Made Me, Me.

We'd never heard of microwaves, or telephones in cars and babies might be bottle-fed, but they weren't grown in jars.

And pumping iron got wrinkles out and 'gay' meant fancy-free and dorms were never coed in the Land That Made Me, Me.

We hadn't seen enough of jets to talk about the lag and microchips were what was left at the bottom of the bag.

And Hardware was a box of nails, and bytes came from a flea and rocket ships were fiction in the Land That Made me, Me.

Buicks came with portholes, and side shows came with freaks and bathing suits came big enough to cover both your cheeks and Coke came just in bottles and skirts below the knee and Castro came to power near the Land That Made Me, Me.

We had no Crest with Fluoride, we had no Hill Street Blues, we had no patterned pantyhose or Lipton herbal tea or prime-time ads for condoms in the Land That Made Me, Me.

There were no golden arches, no Perrier to chill and fish were not called Wanda and cats were not called Bill.

And middle-aged was 35 and old was forty-three and ancient were our parents in the Land That Made Me, Me.

But all things have a season, or so we've heard them say and now instead of Maybelline we swear by Retin-A.

They send us invitations to join AARP, we've come a long way, baby, from the Land That Made Me, Me.

So now we face a brave new world in slightly larger jeans and wonder why they're using smaller print in magazines and we tell our children's, children of the way it used to be, long ago and far away in the Land That Made Me, Me.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Only 365 days til the new year. Only 20 more days til the world can breathe a sigh of relief, with the source of the sense of relief moving to my part of the world. Only 8 more days til my Mom and Dad are in my part of the world.

And here I am, up early in the new year, no hangover, having gone to bed early on New Year's Eve, with no resolutions for the new year.

I don't need to lose weight.

I don't need to exercise more.

I don't need to eat more fruits and vegetables.

I don't need to read more.

I don't need to watch less TV.

I don't need to have more fun.

I don't need to learn anything new.

I don't need to quit smoking.

I don't need to be a nicer person. (I couldn't get any nicer)

I don't need to blog more.

I don't need to do anything different, near as I can tell.

I guess I could stand to put on a few pounds. But I don't feel compelled to make a resolution about it.

Speaking of weight loss resolutions. Last night I was reading a particularly pretentious blogging about a person's New Year's Goals. This person was pondering a variety of possible goals. One of this person's ponderings was perhaps the possible goal of losing 100 pounds! 100 pounds!

I read that and thought, good gawd, if you are 100 pounds overweight you shouldn't need the start of a new year to motivate yourself to lose the blubber. I've heard of people making a resolution to lose that last 10 or 20 pounds. But, 100 pounds? If I lost 100 pounds I'd weigh 75. I'd be dead.

How can anyone stand to carry around that much blubber all the time? It is so unfathomable to me that so many people are that self-destructive. I used to know a morbidly obese person who easily weighed 600 pounds. She'd have to resolve to lose 450 pounds to get healthy. That'd take a lot of time, likely a multi-year resolution.

Anyway, it's the first day of 2009. I am not on a diet. I am going up to Lake Grapevine today. It is supposed to get to 72. I may go on a Polar Bear Swim this first day of the new year.