1st Camelia of the season
Another reason to live in Texas. Minneapolis is buried in snow and the camelias are blooming in McKinney. This the 1st one in my garden.
1st Camelia of the Season
December 4, 2010
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Posted by molson46
Aggie game saga
November 22, 2010Yesterday Andy, Gwen, and I drove to College Station for the A&M/Nebraska football game. Kara stayed home because she did not feel well. We took off for the game around 2PM and she took off to see the Doctor. We planned to watch the game and spend the night in a hotel in Groesbeck which is about an hour North of College Station towards Dallas.
We arrived in College Station after a non-eventful trip at least for me (I took a long nap) and had burgers at the best burger joint in town – Koppe Bridge Grill and Bar).
Koppe Bridge Grill
The game promised to be exciting. Both teams were ranked. Aggies were 19 and Nebraska 9. The weather was great – unseasonable warm for this time of year and the wind out of the South 20-30 mph. Maybe Al Gore is right but that is another story…
90,000 fans showed up for the game which set a record for Kyle field. If you have never been to an Aggie game you must go sometime. I don’t know why they put seats in the stadium because everyone stands most of the time. It is a combination of the seats are so narrow there is no room to sit anyway and it is apparently an Aggie tradition to stand. The fans also yell constantly. The noise is similar to being in Tornado!! And the noise plays an important part in the story later.
90,000 Fans
Photo is terrible. Shot it with my phone. Do you think I will ever learn and just start taking my camera everywhere? I never have if when I really want to take picture.
When the game finally starts at 7 PM it is everything it promised to be. Nebraska starts out with a 7 minute drive mostly on the ground but the Aggie defense stiffened and the Huskers came away with only a field goal. Through much of the 1st quarter we wondered if the Aggies would ever get a 1st down. Finally the Aggie offense started to roll and drove down the field only to be stopped for a field goal also.
Half time comes and the Aggie band was awesome. They are another good reason to go see an Aggie game. For years the Aggie football teams were horrible and the highlight of the game was the Aggie band half time performance.
Mid-way through the 3rd quarter Andy starts getting text messages from Kara. She is becoming very ill and Averi Grace who is at her other grandfathers for the night vomited 3 times so grandfather is bringing her home because he does not know what to do with her. As I said earlier there are 90K fans in the stadium and they are all yelling so making a phone call is out of reason for two reasons: 1) 90K people are trying to make phone calls, and 2) you could not hear anyway because the sound is like being in the eye of a tornado. Gwen gets in on the texting because Andy cannot get through 1/2 the time. Meanwhile Kara is getting worse. Andy and Gwen have sent text messages to most of DFW to go help Kara and we decide to drive home after the game because the situation at home sounds dire.
The game ends. Aggies win 9-6 – 5 field goals were the only scores.
The Nebraska coach has to be restrained from going after the refs. Read: http://tinyurl.com/2ezkydp
We skip the hotel and drive home. I drive. Andy and Gwen watch sports center on his iPad through the slingbox connected to his home tv and tweet his friends and fellow Aggies everything about the game. They also watch a U-Tube video someone has posted of the Nebraska coach’s brother taking out a TV camera man after the game. What is the World coming to. That is another story also….
We are finally in bed at 3:30pm; up today at 10 and feeling blah; can’t do this anymore
To top off the weekend the Cowboys won their 2nd straight game by beating the Lions!!
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Posted by molson46
First music I remember
November 7, 2010What are the first 3 songs that come to mind when you think of your childhood – younger than Junior High?
For me it is:
- Peter and the Wolf – parents had it on 45s and played it for at least me a lot. I happened to hear a snippet of it a while back and all the memories came flooding back.: East house, funny carpet on the living room floor, taking a bath on Saturday night in the portable tub in the Dining room because we did not get an inside bathroom until I was in 6th grade, the party phone on the wall with a different ring for each of the 13 subscribers, Uncle Julius, the old black 47 Plymouth. I just listened to Peter and the Wolf this afternoon and it is as good as ever.
- Ghost Riders in the Sky – Laying on the floor of the East house listening to it – Vaughn Monroe I think. Don’t know why I remember this one but it popped into my head.
- You are my Sunshine – my mother sang it all the time. I don’t know who she was singing about? I remember her singing it while making soap our of pig lard at the East house.
What are yours?
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Posted by molson46
Australian Ghost Gums
October 25, 2010
Ghost gums
This photo was taken around 1980 just outside of Alice Springs, Australia in the heart of the outback. I used Kodachrome 64 slides film, and scanned the slide into the computer last year.
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Posted by molson46
Yucca Plant Blooming
September 27, 2010
I have fallen in love with yucca plants. This is one blooming in my backyard. The photo was taken early in the morning yesterday with a very heavy due. Yuccas are the prefect landscape plant for lazy gardeners. You never have to trim yucca plants and they grow very slowly so you don’t have to chop them down after 10 years because they have overtaken your landscape. Rabbits don’t eat them and my dog stays clear of them. What more could you ask for?
I have 5 in my backyard now around the pool which is about the limit the landscape will stand without appearing to look like the Painted Desert. They tend to bloom in the fall and do so rapidly. The stalk grows out of the Yucca and produces blooms in about a week.
There are many different varieties. I am growing what is commonly called soft leaf yucca which is a relative term. The leaves are pretty darn hard and stiff but compared to some other yuccas they are really “soft”.
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Posted by molson46
Football Saturday in Texas
September 20, 2010
Cale's game - 7 year olds
Our day started out watching the grandson play tackle football. In Texas 7 year olds pay tackle football. Seems a bit too young to me. His team did not do too good today. Looked like the parents and coaches were taking the loss much harder than the kids. Something for us adults to learn — Playing the game is more important than winning!!
Then we drove 3.5 hours to College Station for the Texas A&M vs. FIU game. Talk about different ends of the pendulum. Just parents and friends at the 7 year old game. 80,000 crazy Aggies at the A&M game. Most of them clad in Maroon. The game was a comedy of errors. Jerod Johnson (A&M quarterback) threw 4 interceptions and the FIU Panthers lead 20-6 late in the third quarter.
Big crowd for A&M vs. FIU
As soon as the drunk single guys with the foul mouths got fed up and left Jerod quit throwing interceptions and the Aggies scored 21 straight points. Thanks Jerod, you drove the drunk single guys with the foul mouths away! The Aggies won and we drove home to Dallas. Home in bed at 2AM. The end of a football Saturday in Texas! I am getting too old for this.
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Posted by molson46
The party (vacation) is over… and the road never ends
September 17, 2010The party (vacation) is over. I have been back at work for a week now and regardless of all my good intentions to work less and have a life I am back in the same routine as before vacation. I word 11-12 hours every day regularly and come in on the weekends. I can’t come in tomorrow (Saturday) because we are going to watch the beloved Aggies beat up on some school called FSU!!!!
I did not post any photos of the last two days of our vacation. We spent both days driving from Flagstaff to Dallas with an overnight layover in Amarillo. Almost the entire distance from Flagstaff to Dallas is part of the Southern Great Plans. They are beautiful and impressive in their own unique way but you cannot capture the aura in a photo. They are just too expansive. You would need a 360 degree panorama shot. Traveling through the Great Plains I can understand why the 1st settlers passed through them as quickly as possible to get to the mountains. Oh what a relief it must have been to actually see and touch a tree again after months of traveling through a flat plain with no vegetation except grass.
… and the road never ends. I am ready to plan our next trip. Where should we go?
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Posted by molson46
Cliff Dwellings
September 11, 2010
Cliff Dwelling Ruins
Visited Sanagua Indian cliff dwelling ruins today. Sanagua is Spanish for “without water”. The Indians abandoned these dwellings around 1250 A.D. Of course no one is sure why. The ruins are about 1/2 way up a cliff in Walnut Canyon. The main reason they built here was for safety. There is no way you could sneak up to this place. On the other hand they had to climb out of the canyon to raise corn and hunt. Likewise, they had to descend to the bottom of the canyon for water.
After visiting the ruins we drove into Flagstaff and watched a movie (The American). I was expecting a George Clooney action movie. Boy was I in for a surprise. This is a great movie if you like to watch George Clooney do nothing and if you don’t like happy endings. On the upside the girl was a “10”.
Heading home tomorrow. However, we are stopping in Amarillo Saturday night and then onto beautiful Fairview on Sunday.
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Posted by molson46
Sedona Rocks!
September 9, 2010
Red rocks abound in Sedona
Blue Skies and Red Rocks are plentiful in Sedona. Today we drove from Flagstaff to Sedona via Oak Creek Canyon Road which is quite a pleasant drive if you don’t mind sheer drop offs of a 1000 feet or so. Ate lunch at Sedona and drove around taking photos. I wanted to go on a hike and find one of the famed “Vortexes of Power” that Sedona is famous for but I hurt my knee hiking in Pagosa Springs and Gwen cannot take the Sunshine (vampire syndrome).
We had lunch at Oaxaca’s in Sedona. It is Mexican cuisine and very good. I would recommend it to anyone traveling through Sedona.
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Posted by molson46
4 Corners
September 9, 2010
Standing on 4 Corners
Drove from Pagosa Springs to Flagstaff today. Stopped at the 4 Corners. Gwen is in Utah with one foot in Arizona and one in Colorado. new Mexico is left out.
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Posted by molson46
Number 6's Blog 