Whooper

News

Jack Hays — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:56:00 +0000

I just blogged (below) that my blogging is on hold. But first I gotta post two pieces of news.

Number One: goat Britches had triplets this morning. Trips are bad--they're hard for the goat to carry and hard to nurture. And it's common for at least one of the trips to have some sort of problem. Often leg/hip problems. The legs don't work right, they can't stand, which means they can't nurse, which means they die. It's too early to tell, but it looks like we may have that problem this time.

Number two: black-bellied whistling ducks have found our oak grove. The locals call them Mexican perching ducks. Because they perch. In the trees, on the fence, whatever. This is a repeat of three years ago--two mating pairs of whistlers are arguing over who's going to get to nest in an oak tree. That's their favorite nest--in the hollow of an old oak. The ducklings live in the hollow for a little more than two weeks, then mom & dad shove them out, and they fall to the ground. Thunk. Then mom walks them to water. Honest.

The last time this happened, I couldn't figure out where the water would be. We have a creek across the road, but it ain't much, and it's far from the trees. I think the ducks figured that out, for they never nested. I posed the same question to Jeanne this morning. What are those ducks thinking? Then we both slowly turned and looked at our nice, new, clean pool.

Oh, hell.

On hold

Jack Hays — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:48:00 +0000

Blogger is still shredding my posts. My blog is on whooper.com, but I use the software at blogger.com to generate it. I'm changing that. I'm installing my own software. It'll take a few days. Maybe a few more than a few, because I have other pots on the stove. I'm off-line until I get the new software installed.

Chores

Jack Hays — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:22:00 +0000

We bought some swell teak outdoor furniture last spring. Two tables, ten chairs. Expensive. I gave it three coats of teak oil. Within a couple of months the Texas weather had taken its toll. So I cleaned it, sanded it down and gave it a couple more coats of teak oil. Sixty days later it looked crappy again. I gave it a time-out until this spring. Time for the furniture to think about what it had done wrong, and how it could do better this year.

A few weeks ago I went at one of the tables with stripper, and yesterday I did four of the chairs. Multiple coats of stripper, then scrape the sludge off, then hose the stuff down. Get rid of all the teak oil. Then sand it down with coarse sandpaper, then finish with fine sanding. Wipe it down with mineral spirits. Finally, three coats of a hard outdoor finish (Minwax, not my favorite brand; I think this particular product is basically polyurethane with a UV blocker).

It's a lot of work, made harder by the fact that the furniture is a combination of stainless steel and teak. I had dripped teak oil on the stainless, and it turned out that it's not so much oil as a thin, gooey varnish. Which left streaks on the stainless that had to come off with stripper and 3M abrasive pads. I'm being more careful this time, which involves a lot of blue tape and keeping the sander away from the stainless.

The finished product looks good. I still have a big table and six chairs to do.

I don't think it would be realistic to expect even a hard finish to last more than a year. So am I supposed to go through this again next spring? Ten or twenty hours over two or three weekends, just to make the patio furniture pretty? I think not.

I'm open to suggestions.

You may have noticed

Jack Hays — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:22:00 +0000

Blogger keeps losing my posts, then finding them, then losing them again.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

The cattle tank

Jack Hays — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:15:00 +0000

The water lilies are abundant and glorious. The frogs are immense. But they're quiet.

I saw a scissor-tailed flycatcher yesterday. A pair of black-bellied whistling ducks strafed me last night. Junebugs gather under the lights at night, even though it's nowhere near June.

The wildflowers are sparse. Worse than sparse, because it's been dry ever since it was wet.

I haven't seen or heard the hawks in a few days, but there's been a rooster in the pasture.

Spring.

Chow

Jack Hays — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:11:00 +0000

We seeded the... well, it's not a lawn. It's more of a bunch of dirt where we want to encourage some sort of green crap before we turn it over to the weeds. We seeded it, then we watered it. The idea was to eliminate mud by making more mud.

There are little ant holes with teensy little blue-white specks around them. Rings. Like you sprinkled ant poison around the hole. I figured it out. It's grass seed. The ants are gathering it and collecting it at their holes. It would fit down the hole, so I'm guessing that some ant quartermaster rejected it, and told them to leave it outside.

R & L

Jack Hays — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:07:00 +0000

Yesterday on NPR I heard a guy...

Okay, I really want to be PC, but...

I heard this guy and he was from China. Honest, people from China are swell. Some of my best friends are from China.

Anyway, he's from China, and Diane Rehm is asking him about the Olympics, and...

Oh, man, I feel so bad. But she asks him a question, and in his answer he brings up....

I'm so sorry. This is so tacky.

He tries to use the phrase "nuclear nonproliferation."

I busted my gut.

Finally, a pithy, meaningful blog post, Part 2

Jack Hays — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:51:00 +0000

Swimming makes me feel better.

Finally, a pithy, meaningful blog post

Jack Hays — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:39:00 +0000

I'm wearing the King Ranch suede grilling apron that I got for my birthday. It's monogrammed. Dude.

Still Banquet, though

Jack Hays — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:31:00 +0000

As long as I can remember, Coors beer boasted of being brewed with Rocky Mountain spring water. Now the label says Rocky Mountain water.

Yes, we had two with lunch. Sliders and Spanish lima bean salad. Outside under the oak trees. The weather is unbelievable.

Adjustable rate

Jack Hays — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:01:00 +0000

Think your life sucks? Saw a story in the paper today about a 56-year-old guy who worked at a mortgage factory owned by Cerebus Capital. The company tanked and he lost his job. He kept up payments on his own mortgage out of savings while he looked for a job. Then he got leukemia. He has no health insurance, because he's still unemployed. His savings vanished.

So he called his mortage company, asking for a break. Ironically, they're owned by Cerebus. They said they couldn't do anything for him because his mortgage was still in good standing. He hadn't missed a payment.

So now he's missed several, and just got a formal notice of default. The mortgage company still isn't working with him. They say there's no point in working out a deferred payment schedule with someone who shows no signs of being able to pay. Such as an unemployed person with leukemia.

Now he's asking if he could maybe please stay in the house until he finishes treatment.

Wow

Jack Hays — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 23:10:00 +0000

We're about to go out on the patio and celebrate the end of a beautiful spring day with a couple of Martinis. I've never seen a day any prettier. Wait.

It's an hour later. What an evening. The hawk visited, and the baby Axis. Buzzy was her crazy self.

The landscaping is in. Since we're declining to sod, and are doing semi-native seeds intead, we're going to have to deal with mud for a few more weeks. So tired of mud.

Fixed a speaker, changed the air filters, balanced the pool H2O, had a light breakfast at a little cafe, went to the Cibolo Nature Center's Mostly Native Plant Sale. Bought twelve little herbs, a big, soft not-quite-cactus and an heirloom tomato plant. Came home and planted. It was getting warm around 1 pm. Jeanne went out to the tool shed, where she has a refrigerator for goat penicillin. She also had a small stash of Miller Lite. We seldom drink beer, but it was so perfect on a warm, sunny afternoon.

Went to Home Depot, bought a basket full of spring stuff. Fertilized the cactus and the lantana. Watered the herbs. Made the first-of-spring thistle tour with a gallon of weed killer. Adjusted the settings on the sprinkler clock. (Someday I'll tell you about what noble and conscientious irrigators we are.)

Tonight, small steaks with spinach linguine. Chimichurri sauce on the linguini. Spinach salad. We got the chimichurri from a new local Argentinian joint. It's fabulous, but everybody needs to have some, because the garlic is radioactive.

It's a swell time of year. We've gotten some light moisture, but could use more. Not to worry. Weekend after next, our friend Tom Carr (architect of our house) is coming down from Denver. He always brings rain. We're grateful when he doesn't bring a tsunami. Mark your calendar--mucho pluviation in two weeks.

Tomorrow begins with four bags of mulch.

Jesus

Jack Hays — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 02:12:00 +0000

The ancestor/descendant math mentioned below works both ways. You have two parents. Four grandparents. Eight great-grandparents. Sixteen great-great-grandparents. Thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents.

Calculate it back 20 generations. 400 to 600 years. You have more than two million ancestors. Go back another 20 generations, to somewhere between AD 800 and 1200. You have more than 2.1 trillion ancestors. Except there weren't 2.1 trillion people on earth then. Still aren't. Another 20 or 50 generations?

You are incredibly inbred. A lot of cousins mated.

The chances that you are related to Charlemagne or Cleopatra or Isaac Newton or Michelangelo or Jesus or Mohammed or Abraham are almost exactly 100 percent.

Wear it proudly.

Tejano

Jack Hays — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 02:02:00 +0000

My new doctor (below) is a real, live Vela and Guerra. Those are two families that obtained massive Spanish land grants and settled in South Texas in the 17th century. Their lands have been diminished through history, due in no small part to land fraud and Texas Ranger misbehavior. But they still have large holdings, split into many pieces.

They had a family reunion a few years back, tracing descendants from the seven sons of the original Vela. According to the good doctor, it was the largest family reunion on record. That's probably BS, but if you take seven sons in, say 1690, and credit each 30-year generation with an average of four new puppies, you come up with something like (according to my quick, sloppy calculations) something like 1.8 million descendants. Okay, be skeptical and move back two generations. 114,000 descendants.

More than you can fit into a Holiday Inn Express.

Rx

Jack Hays — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:42:00 +0000

Went to a new doctor this morning. The old one dissed me with interminable waits.

I like the new guy. Only objection might be that he markets sorta like a veterinarian or a dentist--special vitamins available thru him, little posters about his cryo-removal tool for skin tags, and like that. But a guy's gotta make a buck, I guess.

Taking my blood pressure, he decided that I needed the small cuff, not the large one. That was an ego blow. I'm not a weight-lifter, but my small-caliber mini-guns come in at 14 or 15 inches. If that's small, what's your average 115-pounder? It would have been more diplomatic if he had said that I needed the regular cuff.

His scale is twenty pounds heavy. Twenty pounds heavier than what I weighed at the old doctor three weeks ago. I couldn't have packed that much on, though the week when the girls visited was, inadvertently, a hamburger fest. I've been lax about salt. Gotta tighten up on that.

Health-wise, I'm doing a crappy job of aging. That depresses me, which of course sends me to comfort food and martinis. Vicious, vicious, vicious circle. I'm very happy with my life, and don't want to croak anytime in the near future.

Chef Ramsay just said (on TV) that vegetarian rabbit food is out. Sumptuous, indulgent, sexy vegetarian dishes are in. Congrats--you just made veggies as fattening as prime rib.

I want a pill or a spa or something. Anything but personal responsibility. It's hard being human.

Yes, I know.

Spring

Jack Hays — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:31:00 +0000

Our old, round, concrete cattle tank is turning into a swell above-ground pond.

We've had a couple of goldfish in it for several years, to keep mosquitoes down. Then, a couple of years ago my clever daughters snuck off to Wal-Mart and bought about a dozen and dumped them in. I think they're breeding. It's well-populated, even after the winter cold.

Three years ago I bought a water lily at Home Depot, and put it on top of an underwater cinder block. It has made itself at home. I assume it's still in a stupid little plastic pot, but it must have roots the size of my leg squirting out over the rim. Flowers are abundant.

We've figured out the trick to keeping a pond pump running. The tank is full of crap, and it's overhung by a Chinaberry tree that constantly dumps leaves and trash into it. So the pump intake tends to clog quickly. We built a big box out of wire fabric (about quarter-inch holes), which keeps the trash at a distance where it isn't affected by the pump suction. So far, in about two weeks, no clogging.

The pump squirts an umbrella-bubble of water at the surface. This afternoon, under the bubble, were a flowering water lily, two big blossom-buds and a fat green frog.

So sweet.

But It's Free!!!

Jack Hays — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:39:00 +0000

Blogger blew up today. April Fools'.

First it lost everything between 12/31 and now. And all my formatting. I fixed the format problem, but not the data loss.

Then they restored a backup or something. Now I have everything thru March, but no April.

Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Child

Jack Hays — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 03:22:00 +0000

I'm sitting on the floor, watching Stupid TV. God, I love trash.

Next to me, on the couch, is child Jean. I have three people on the planet at the top of my list; Jean is one. My mood improves 200% just because she is here. But it's tricky, because your basic Guy Father has a hard time spending long hours in serious discussions with a Young Babe Daughter. You adore them, but you have exactly zero in common. Maybe less.

She's here for my birthday, more or less. She's always here for my birthday. I don't give a damn about my birthday, but having an annual marker for her visit--wonderful.

We took out the trash tonite. From the garage to the distant curb in the John Deere Gator. Wait--we don't have a curb. We took it to the road. Then I embarrassed her by driving a quarter-mile to the end of the road, pointing out all the fascinating neighbors. Breeze blowing in our face, totally not cool. Generation gap. Driving in a modified golf cart with a geezer.

I love my children. I hope I manage to stay closer to them than my parents did to me. I hope they have a sense of humor. That will help.

More axis

Jack Hays — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:18:00 +0000

The axis out front are Mom and the Twins, who have lived here for most of the last year. They like our southeast pasture.

About six weeks ago, Mom disappeared. We worried, but I speculated that maybe she had a new love, or maybe she was pushing the twins out of the nest, on their own. Then the twins disappeared, and another family of five or six moved in.

When I drove in this evening, they were back. Mom was under a tree, cleaning up a new fawn, meaning that it was probably twenty minutes old. It was on its feet, but wobbly. When Jeanne came in a half-hour later, Mom was nudging it to nurse. Now, a couple of hours later, Mom and the Twins are out in the pasture, grazing. The baby is following along, jumping and trying out its legs. In a matter of a few hours.

Soon Mom will find a safe place for Baby under the trees, and will teach it to stay there. Mom will come back maybe twice a day to nurse. Not much more often than that.

If you follow this blog, you know that we also have a couple of magnificent new hawks in the neighborhood. This could get interesting, in a not-entirely-Bambi sort of way.

The future of our nation

Jack Hays — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:14:00 +0000

This will be long.

We spent Easter weekend in Crystal Beach with Jeanne's hyper-extended family. The Buchanans.

The gasoline roundtrip cost $165. You used to be able to fly to California for that. Fortunately, it was worth it.

The people there, spread across three generations, were named Jeanne, Jeff, Joanne, Janet, Jay, Jackie, Tim, Teresa, Jordan, Kayla, Jessica, Mark, Christina, Maddie, Rachel, Travis, Meagan, Sara, Matt, Nick, Frank, Kathy, Caya, Debbie, Steve, Grace, Wes, another Jeff, Stephanie, another Stephanie, Huck, Brandon and Brandon's wife. Thirty-three people.

Most of those people were staying in a single large beach house rented by Jackie, who was organizing the event and benefits by being a saint. Some were day visitors or had an RV or something. Everyone behaved well. My favorite was Kayla, who I hadn't met before.

The Buchanans are competitive. If you locked them in a prison, they would figure out a game involving a stainless steel toilet and a shiv. They always play golf and poker, and usually end up pitching washers. Pitching washers is a game that involves lobbing large steel washers at boards with holes in them. You try to get 21 points without busting. The game is similar to cricket, in that a game can take a couple of days. This weekend we had a double elimination tournament with nine teams. Tim kept the ladder. I chose to drink beer. Kayla was the only player who demonstrated the ability to pitch with her right hand while holding her beer AND her washers in her left. The trick is to hang the washers on your pinkie. She has developed a no-step style that does not spill beer. Jeanne, who is otherwise coordinated, scored eight points over the course of the tournament. Three-one point tosses and a five-point. The five-pointer put her team over 21, and they lost.

Shrimp boil Friday night. Egg strada Saturday morning. Hamburgers and hot dogs Saturday lunch. Brisket Saturday night. We left Sunday morning; they're probably still there, eating General Tsao's Chicken.

You learn a lot about people at these events. Sometimes more than you want to know.

A group of young people who have somehow survived into their twenties has reached critical mass. They now entertain themselves, and form into their own party. They go where they want. It is frightening, because you know that this means you're the old farts. The young people also honor the ancient tradition of staying up until 3am, then sleeping in until noon. This creates an interesting dynamic when eighteen people are sleeping in the same three-bedroom, two-bath house.

Jeanne and I rented a little house of our own, because we are not legally obligated to live with young people and choose not to do so. Our house was small--two bedrooms and a bath--and it was beachfront, though at a distance from the water, behind the dune. That's where beachfront houses ought to be, instead of clomped on top of fragile dunes, or plunked out on the beach. The rental agent said it was a great place, as long as you didn't mind people walking up and down the beach. We don't.

The house was priced using an index: 107% times the price of a suite at the Fairmont San Francisco. We decided to take the $69 linens option (otherwise you bring your own). For that price--equal to a night at a La Quinta--they drop a couple of plastic bins full of towels and sheets in your living room. The house had a kitchenette, a dinette and a livingroomette. The one bath was a Jack-and-Jill between the two bedrooms. It had a clown toilet. Padded seat, and tucked into a deep niche that was twenty inches wide (five four-inch tiles). My shoulders must be about 26 inches wide, as it turned out. Error above: there were no tiles. There was plastic paneling that might have looked like tiles if it hadn't had nail holes. There were soft spots in the floor. The same sort of soft spots we had in our little house until I put my foot through one.

Jackie's house, by contrast, was a complete swankienda. It was for sale, and we dug up the price, but I'm too refined to tell you what the price was. On the one hand, it was a bargain. On the other hand, it's going to turn into floating splinters when The Big One hits.

Saturday morning, back at our shack, I put two and two together. One two was that they had delivered two huge buckets of linens. The other two was the price of the place. I looked carefully at the furniture in the living room, and eyed the two couches in the dining room. It was all pull-outs and trundles. The place would sleep twelve. With one bath. Like sardines, but without the oil.

We drove to Crystal Beach via Galveston. Galveston was a scene. Not like an insane Spring Break Scene (that was a week or two ago), but still crowded and noisy. The traffic was tough. We took the ferry to Crystal Beach, which is on the Bolivar Peninsula, across the mouth of Galveston Bay. We had to wait an hour for the ferry. I made martinis from the gin in the cooler.

Everything quieted down when we got to Crystal Beach. The Bolivar Peninsula is considered down-market from Galveston Island, because it does not have water slides, jello-shot bars, fake exploding volcanoes and twelve-story convention hotels. I'd take CB over Galv, easy. It seemed to us that what set Crystal Beach apart was that it was quiet. The beaches near Jackie's rental were tranquil and almost empty. You could take a walk and enjoy the beach, the water, the birds. Jeanne found a swell shell. We sat in the back yard, watching people pitch washers, enjoying a cool breeze.

There's not much commerce on the peninsula. Someone went out looking for ice and came up empty at three convenience stores. (Tip: try the bait camps on the inland side.) I made a run to Joe's Liquor Store and Auto Sales. I am not making this up. Joe sits inside at a desk, opposite a big-screen TV. The room is tiny, with pints of liquor lined up on flimsy shelves. Two cases of warm Budweiser sit on the floor. You squeeze by Joe's desk to go in the back room. The walls have shelves on them that were built from sticks and boards as a Cub Scout project. Vodka, tequila, cheap bourbon and lots of flavored alcohol. Joe has five or six cars out front with prices on their windshields. "Hey, pal, why not take that bottle of Gray Goose for a spin in this nice, clean Chevy?"

It was a holiday weekend, and some of the usual residents were displaced by revelers. On the streets, I saw young men in wife-beaters driving pickups with big tires. Often they had young women in the truck with them. The women wore a lot of eye-liner, and occasionally one of them would yell the word "Woo" out the window as loudly as she could. Sometimes there was a rebel flag flying from a pole in the back of the truck. Sometimes two.

I do not think that these young people are typical of Crystal Beach. I think they are typical of Texas beaches in the spring.

But we didn't run into these young men or women, generally. Everything was entirely civilized in Jackie's neighborhood. Except maybe us. Pitching washers can get noisy. Jay can get noisy. There was a boom box involved, and prodigious amounts of Miller Lite. We were the people you don't want living next to your beach house. But everyone was well-behaved and polite. What kind of country would this be if you couldn't celebrate the resurrection of the Lord by pitching a few washers?

Jeanne and I had a private experience that we weren't able to share with the rest of the family, because it took place Saturday night at our little house, and we left early Sunday morning. The neighborhood around our house was a little more densely packed, and it was in the vicinity of a commercial center (turn right at the post office) but it was just fine. Friday night there were a couple of loud campers on the beach, but no big deal.

Saturday night we return to the shack around nine. On the other side of the dune, on the beach, was... well, do you remember the scene from Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen's boat is moving upriver and it comes upon a USO show that might have been staged by Federico Fellini? Fireworks and bright lights and noise and booze and explosions and hookers and insanity? That was what was on the beach. Hundreds--I am not joking--hundreds of pickup trucks with big tires were cruising the beach, bumper-to-bumper in two opposing lanes. Each of them had beer-soaked passengers in the bed. Flags waved from the trucks--rebel flags, pirate flags, beer flags, Texas flags, you name it. Horns honking and a great many young people yelling the word "Woo" as loudly as they could. Rev your engine, pop your clutch. Directly across from our front door, just across the dune, was a shack selling flags and flagpoles. There were spotlights and bonfires. Every third truck had bass-thumpers so loud that they must have been towed on trailers.

We pulled the drapes, locked the deadbolt and went to bed. We could hear battle yells. Then beer yells. Then condom yells. Around midnight they broke out the fireworks. I think it was around 2am when someone started firing a pistol.

We got up this morning and drove a stretch of the beach. It looked like a beer canning line had exploded. Cars were parked for miles. Odd--mostly cars, not pickups. No sign of tents. The future of our nation was sleeping it off in their back seats. Seagulls pecked at the debris.

Could you have more fun?

Axis

Jack Hays — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:12:00 +0000

Out by the front gate, momma Axis (deer) is still licking her newborn. The babe is smaller than a house cat, but with longer legs. This stuff is great. It makes you feel good. But the last thing we need is more axis.

Hello?

Jack Hays — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:11:00 +0000

No blogging for a few days, because we've been absorbed in landscaping. Plants and trees and dirt and Bobcats and backhoes. What a change.

It will take another year or two to get it like we want it. Then five years for it to settle in and flourish. In the meantime, lots of trimming and pruning and cursing.

Tomorrow we drive down to Crystal Beach (up-Gulf from Galveston) for a family weekend. We're bringing two big casseroles of egg strada for Saturday breakfast, plus muffins, fruit, champagne, orange juice (mimosas) and the frame of a '57 Chevy, just in case someone brings a couple of fenders and a welding rig.

We're going to look at the map and find an eight-hour route that avoids Houston, instead of a six-hour route through the city. We have time. We don't need exasperation. (Yes, it should be three-plus hours. But have you been to Houston lately?)

(The landscape guy is named Rudy. We want to give him a big, wet kiss. Damn, this bunch is good.)

Japan

Jack Hays — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 03:52:00 +0000

Why is the Chairman on Iron Chef? Does he speak English? Do they dub all his lines?

New Iron Chef Michael Symon giggles. Not like a girl. Like a guilty porn-obsessed, marijuana-loaded, helium-inhaling ironworker with a pair of Lithuanian circus twins stuffed in his closet. The twins are dressed in fur underwear, eating Snickers bars and humming the Star Trek theme.

If you know what I mean.

Chinese?

Jack Hays — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:55:00 +0000

I read a book review in Newsweek today. The book was about Chinese food. The author's last name was Lee. Her middle name was 8.

They (feminist reporter Jennifer Yarbroff and her editors) went right by that without comment.

Hi, I'm 6% Haltenfelter.

Inner peace

Jack Hays — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:23:00 +0000

This morning it took me 45 minutes to figure out that my car keys were in the bottom of a garbage can in the garage.

Tonight, I found the wine bottle in the DVD cabinet in 5 minutes.

It's important to know yourself.