Saturday, May 30, 2020
Another Milestone
I'll have a post in a day or two about the month of May, and how it went, but here a little spoiler for you, it went just great.
Today, I'm on here to tell you that I hit another cool milestone on my way toward my goal of 300,000 words in my 45th year of life...or wait, in my 46th year of life? I turn 46 on my birthday this year, does that mean that this is my 46th year? I think so, because zero to one year old is you first year of life. I guess that's why were living in the 21st century. Math is hard. Is this math? Or just counting? Or just semantics?
Speaking of math, my writing numbers have added up to a pretty significant number. Two days ago, I noticed that I was getting perilously close to 200,000 words for the year. I did the math...on a calculator, and found that I needed to write 1301 words to get there. I vowed to make it the next day. I've had several 1300 word days this month already, so it should be possible if not easy.
Yesterday was a crazy day, however. Here in Houston there was a big protest over the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. George Floyd was a Houston native who only recently moved to Minnesota, so a lot of people that live here knew him personally.
The protests got a little out of hand in some places, and resulted in some intense news coverage. I didn't get my usual lunch break to write yesterday, so I was way behind. Not only that, but it was at least thirty minutes later than my usual out time that I left for home.
So, I got home and it was already past midnight. I sat down to write anyway, and worked until my eyes were burning, desperate for sleep. I my wordcount, and I was at 1386. Huzzah! I made it!
200,000. Luckily I didn't have to stay up to write a few more paragraphs, because I was pretty spent.
So, I'm 2/3 of the way there. There are 150 days left till my birthday. In that time, I have to get another 100,000 words. If I stick to my goal of 1,000 words a day, then I should surpass that by at least 50,000 words. It feels good to be cruising along.
Today, I'm on here to tell you that I hit another cool milestone on my way toward my goal of 300,000 words in my 45th year of life...or wait, in my 46th year of life? I turn 46 on my birthday this year, does that mean that this is my 46th year? I think so, because zero to one year old is you first year of life. I guess that's why were living in the 21st century. Math is hard. Is this math? Or just counting? Or just semantics?
Speaking of math, my writing numbers have added up to a pretty significant number. Two days ago, I noticed that I was getting perilously close to 200,000 words for the year. I did the math...on a calculator, and found that I needed to write 1301 words to get there. I vowed to make it the next day. I've had several 1300 word days this month already, so it should be possible if not easy.
Yesterday was a crazy day, however. Here in Houston there was a big protest over the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. George Floyd was a Houston native who only recently moved to Minnesota, so a lot of people that live here knew him personally.
The protests got a little out of hand in some places, and resulted in some intense news coverage. I didn't get my usual lunch break to write yesterday, so I was way behind. Not only that, but it was at least thirty minutes later than my usual out time that I left for home.
So, I got home and it was already past midnight. I sat down to write anyway, and worked until my eyes were burning, desperate for sleep. I my wordcount, and I was at 1386. Huzzah! I made it!
200,000. Luckily I didn't have to stay up to write a few more paragraphs, because I was pretty spent.
So, I'm 2/3 of the way there. There are 150 days left till my birthday. In that time, I have to get another 100,000 words. If I stick to my goal of 1,000 words a day, then I should surpass that by at least 50,000 words. It feels good to be cruising along.
Thursday, May 28, 2020
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Family Fun
My wife and I each took four days off around this weekend so that we had a good long time that we could use for some kind of a trip as a family, because my son was home to visit. We tried planning something but ran into two problems. Problem number one, everything of interest was closed, or the activities that you could do there were so limited that they might as well be closed. National parks, our favorite things to visit as a family, were closed. Most tourist attractions at all the nearest cities were also closed. We could go somewhere--I was thinking about the area around Austin--but would we be able to do anything once we got there?
Secondly, the weather predictions looked about as bad as they could possibly be. There were supposed to be thunderstorms every single day that we were off, and not just in Houston, but all over Texas. If we picked some nature area that happened to be open, how likely was it that we would get completely drenched while we were out there, and have to hike back while miserable and wet?
We didn't do anything on the first three days of our vacation, but finally, after all that time stuck inside, the weather changed. We could make a day trip. Not one to a far off location, but just to somewhere local. My son and I had once gone to a Houston area state park called Brazos Bend, and we'd raved about how cool it was. My wife suggested that we try that. National parks may not be open, but state parks are. Brazos Bend is also near a local beach called Surfside Beach. We could go to the beach after hitting the park. It was a pretty good solution for our problem.
So, we all got in the car, and drove the hour and a half to Brazos Bend. We got there, and pulled up to the ranger station where we pay to get in.
"Hi," I said.
The ranger looked at me through a facemask and said, "did you reserve your day pass online?"
"No," I said, clueless about what he was even referring to.
"All day passes have to be bought online. We can't do any transactions here anymore. And all the day passes for today have already been sold out," he said. "I have a paper here that walks you through how to reserve your day passes if you'd like that."
So, the only way to buy a day pass was through an online transaction. No dirty filthy cash or even virus-laden credit cards could be handed to this employee. It was fine for the losers at the grocery store, but the good folks at our state government weren't going to allow us to access our public lands in such a manner.
Not only that, but they had limited the capacity...at a state park. Brazos Bend is 5,000 acres. That's more than 217 million square feet. How many people could you fit in 217 million square feet while still keeping them six feet apart? My son and I had been there before and seen what it was like. The place was huge, and we never would have had any trouble socially distancing ourselves from other groups of people if that had been a thing back then. There was no reason to limit capacity. It was absolutely asinine.
As you might have guessed, I was seeing red at this point. I bit my tongue hard so as to not say something rude. This guy was not responsible for this idiotic policy, and he did not deserve to have my anger taken out on him.
"No thanks," I said. "It took us an hour and a half to drive all the way down here. We're not coming back anytime soon."
With that, we scratched Brazos Bend off the list of things to do today. We could still go to the beach...hopefully. So we headed in that direction. It took another hour more or less to get to Surfside beach. If we'd only known that things were going to happen this way, we could have driven straight to Galveston, and only driven an hour total to get there. Instead, we drove almost as long as it would have taken us to get to Corpus Christi, where the beaches are much nicer.
The beach was open at least, and it was most certainly way more crowded than Brazos Bend could possibly be. We set up our chairs in the sand, kicked back and enjoyed the sun.
The kids built a sand castle, and we all played in the water a good amount. My kids even took some turns using our boogie board. The beach turned out to be the best option. If only we'd chosen it as our only option.
To finish off the evening, we decided that we would go out and eat at a restaurant for the first time since they'd shut everything down a few months ago. We looked around the nearby restaurants, but couldn't find anything that we were sure would let us in to dine. In the end, we didn't go anywhere near the beach. Instead, we decided to drive all the way home first and go to our favorite local restaurant just up the street from our house.
It was really nice. The place was almost completely empty, which made me feel pretty sad, but I was happy to be out and doing normal things again. It was nice to feel like a human being again for once instead of feeling like a dangerous bag of viruses and bacteria that could murder someone at any moment.
The next day, the weather wasn't a significant issue, but we still had problems coming up with something to do that wouldn't be closed. The last thing we wanted to do was drive an hour and a half only to be turned away again like we were at Brazos Bend. I couldn't find anything that I was sure we'd be able to enjoy. A few places were open, but all their worthwhile attractions were closed, leaving little to do there.
My wife got fed up, and decided to work on the bathroom that she's been remodeling for the last few weeks. She had a day off, and she didn't want to waste it.
I finally came up with a few things we could do, and presented them to her. She liked them, but when it was time to go, though, she had gotten too involved in the bathroom remodeling process, and decided that she would stay and keep working while the rest of us went without her. So we all got in the car, and headed to our first stop, Smither Park.
I'd never heard of Smither Park until that day. I came across it on a list that came up when I searched things to do in Houston on Google. I later mentioned it to the people I know from work who have lived here for dozens of years and they'd never heard of it either, but it was certainly a very cool place to see.
The whole park is full of these great whimsical statues made in mosaic tiles. They tiled and decorated everything in the park from the picnic tables to the sidewalks to the walls on the back of the park.
It was really interesting.
Every step was another artsy treat to look at.
And the tiles weren't just tiles either, like this wall totally made up of dishes.
And dishes were common things used for decoration at the park. Here's another set under the pavilion.
Or this thing made from old street signs.
There were so many cool things to look at.
We'll be back again soon. One of the first things my daughter said after arriving at the park was that we ought to take her senior pictures there. So, very soon, we'll be back with a grad robe and a smiling high school senior to get some shots.
Everyone was ready for dinner now, so we picked up pizza from Little Caesars and took it to our next destination to eat it. This was our next destination:
This is the Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park. It's a 64 foot tall fountain that runs with water as though it were a waterfall.
I drive past it every day, once on my way to work and once on the way home, and I am a little bit obsessed with it, I must admit. It just seems to be so much like Stephen King's Dark Tower to me, that I can't help but love it.
The way it stands up all black and menacing in the middle of much smaller buildings like it does is just so fun. I came here with some of my kids back in 2018 and did a blog post all about it then.
We couldn't stay long at the Waterwall, however, because sunset was fast approaching, and were going to see the Waugh Bridge bat colony at sunset. I posted about that yesterday. That was just really awesome. If you haven't seen the video, I encourage you to follow that link over and check it out. It was an experience that will require Alzheimer's to make me forget, and as cool as Smither park was, I think everyone loved the bats the most.
Til Death Do We Meet
Marshal Latham did a "Dead and Breakfast Story." Rish Outfield came up with an idea for a series of stories about a haunted bed and breakfast. Then he told everybody about that idea, and invited folks to write their own story as part of the series. Mostly, Rish has written all the stories himself, and published several of them on his podcast, the Rish Outcast.
Marshal is the first person to take Rish up on the offer. He wrote his own D&B story, and made an audio version of it for all to enjoy over on his podcast the Journey Into... Podcast.
I get to play the voice of the bad guy in the story named Tye Palmer.
Check it out, and enjoy.
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
Bat Colony
Last night, we went out to visit the Waugh Drive bat colony. It's something that I heard about way back when we first moved to Houston, and really wanted to see, but we never did, and until just the other day, I totally forgot about it.
Let me tell you, it was absolutely awesome. There's a colony of bats that live in the bridge over the river at Waugh Drive, hundreds of thousands of bats. They stay in the bridge all day long, and then come out all at once. It's a crazy sight, and it totally blew me away. I recorded a video, and you all can check it out.
Let me tell you, it was absolutely awesome. There's a colony of bats that live in the bridge over the river at Waugh Drive, hundreds of thousands of bats. They stay in the bridge all day long, and then come out all at once. It's a crazy sight, and it totally blew me away. I recorded a video, and you all can check it out.
If there's anything like that where you live, I'd recommend checking it out. Amazing.
Little Thief 2
Last year, I brought you the saga of our attempts to feed the birds. The birds, for the most part, got no food whatsoever. Instead, we were encouraging the squirrels that live in the trees on our property to settle in and get fat and lazy.
Hanging a birdfeeder on our trees seemed to be a bad idea, anyway. If we wanted to encourage birds, it wasn't going to work. It only encouraged squirrels, and we have fears that the squirrels may have gotten into our attic, so we certainly don't want to encourage them.
But then, we found this metal pole for hanging bird feeders on. The squirrels already live in the trees, so it's easy for them to get into the bird feeder hanging from the tree, but if it was on the metal pole, and not attached to a tree, maybe that would keep them off.
We put it out, and were quickly proved wrong, but we thought maybe it was because we'd put it too close to the trees, and the squirrels were jumping over from the branches. So, we moved it to the one spot in our yard that isn't close to any trees.
It didn't take long for the squirrels to prove to us they had no problem climbing the slick metal pole either. They have been emptying out the bird feeder with regularity in that spot too.
Maybe there is a pole we could install in the middle of the pool. I think that's probably the only way we could feed the birds without feeding the squirrels, and since that doesn't exist, I guess we need to give up.
Hanging a birdfeeder on our trees seemed to be a bad idea, anyway. If we wanted to encourage birds, it wasn't going to work. It only encouraged squirrels, and we have fears that the squirrels may have gotten into our attic, so we certainly don't want to encourage them.
But then, we found this metal pole for hanging bird feeders on. The squirrels already live in the trees, so it's easy for them to get into the bird feeder hanging from the tree, but if it was on the metal pole, and not attached to a tree, maybe that would keep them off.
We put it out, and were quickly proved wrong, but we thought maybe it was because we'd put it too close to the trees, and the squirrels were jumping over from the branches. So, we moved it to the one spot in our yard that isn't close to any trees.
It didn't take long for the squirrels to prove to us they had no problem climbing the slick metal pole either. They have been emptying out the bird feeder with regularity in that spot too.
Maybe there is a pole we could install in the middle of the pool. I think that's probably the only way we could feed the birds without feeding the squirrels, and since that doesn't exist, I guess we need to give up.
Monday, May 18, 2020
Collect Them All
Check out this email that I got yesterday:
While I love National Parks, I only care about this kind of spam if I'm actively planning a visit to one of them, so normally I would have just deleted the email without reading it at all. However, I was curious just how they expected us to celebrate Parks to Kids day if they were all shut down, so I clicked and read. I was confused when I reached the text that said, "We have tons of virtual park activities for kids and virtual Junior Ranger cancellations to add to your collection!" Cancellations to add to my collection? What the heck was that?
I was moved to click the link and visit the website. Which was similarly confusing.
It kept talking about collecting virtual cancellations. I clicked another link and found more.
I thought that what must be going on here was some kind of Find & Replace command that a staffer at the website had executed because he was so pissed about the stuff that has happened because of coronavirus. Maybe some guy didn't agree with everything being locked down, and so he thought he'd have fun, encourage everybody to enjoy the cancellations. Weee!
I took screen shots of the email and the website, assuming that sooner or later somebody would see this, and return the website to its proper state.
Turns out there's nothing so fun as that involved. I googled passport cancellations, and wound up at this Wikipedia page about the passport stamps program. That didn't immediately clear it up, but one of the links on the page led me to this other Wikipedia page, and at last I understood.
Cancellations are what those little circular stamps they put on letters to show the stamps have been used are called. So, going to a national park to collect cancellations on your passport would be a thing. Therefore, in "these trying times" collecting virtual cancellations would be a thing as well.
I've seen those stamps in the various visitors centers I've been to. I don't collect them myself. I should have, because they are free. Instead, I've been collecting patches from the parks I visit.
They charge more than you might expect for a patch, but I've committed to pay it at all the places I visit. It's all good. I really like patches, so I'm happy.
Now I'm just rambling, I guess. I originally thought I had something interesting to talk about here, and it turned out that it ain't no thang. So, I'll just say goodbye, folks. See you next time.
While I love National Parks, I only care about this kind of spam if I'm actively planning a visit to one of them, so normally I would have just deleted the email without reading it at all. However, I was curious just how they expected us to celebrate Parks to Kids day if they were all shut down, so I clicked and read. I was confused when I reached the text that said, "We have tons of virtual park activities for kids and virtual Junior Ranger cancellations to add to your collection!" Cancellations to add to my collection? What the heck was that?
I was moved to click the link and visit the website. Which was similarly confusing.
It kept talking about collecting virtual cancellations. I clicked another link and found more.
I thought that what must be going on here was some kind of Find & Replace command that a staffer at the website had executed because he was so pissed about the stuff that has happened because of coronavirus. Maybe some guy didn't agree with everything being locked down, and so he thought he'd have fun, encourage everybody to enjoy the cancellations. Weee!
I took screen shots of the email and the website, assuming that sooner or later somebody would see this, and return the website to its proper state.
Turns out there's nothing so fun as that involved. I googled passport cancellations, and wound up at this Wikipedia page about the passport stamps program. That didn't immediately clear it up, but one of the links on the page led me to this other Wikipedia page, and at last I understood.
Cancellations are what those little circular stamps they put on letters to show the stamps have been used are called. So, going to a national park to collect cancellations on your passport would be a thing. Therefore, in "these trying times" collecting virtual cancellations would be a thing as well.
I've seen those stamps in the various visitors centers I've been to. I don't collect them myself. I should have, because they are free. Instead, I've been collecting patches from the parks I visit.
They charge more than you might expect for a patch, but I've committed to pay it at all the places I visit. It's all good. I really like patches, so I'm happy.
Now I'm just rambling, I guess. I originally thought I had something interesting to talk about here, and it turned out that it ain't no thang. So, I'll just say goodbye, folks. See you next time.
Rolled
I thought Rickrolling was a dead meme, but apparently it's still going on. I turned on the radio the other day and got Rickrolled. I couldn't believe it.
Saturday, May 16, 2020
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