Too Many Goodbyes Lately

Well it happened again, we had another goodbye party, another friend was moving. Miss Amy we will miss you muchly. In the meantime, it made for a great excuse for a party. We had a shindig, people came over, and we had a good time. Anyway, here are some pictures, if you were there, let me know and we can add them to this blog entry!

Congraduations are in order?

Well we had a graduation again...high school this time. My younger son-by-choice (stepchild) graduated from high school this week. I want to say good work and congratulations are in order. Let me tell you it was an iteresting week. Thursday morning I hurt my back (muscle spasm, just have to ice and wait it out) and Thursday night we had a progressive dinner for the graduates starting at the church for appetizers, my home for salad, on to another family for lasagna, and back to the church for cake and coffee. I had to bail before lasagna. But it was all good. The ceremnony was Saturday, part of the wonderful 3 day weekend. Let me tell you, if you have ever heard the Stevie Ray Vaughn song, Texas flood, well it was written about weekends like this. It rained in bursts like buckets off and on all weekend. When we got to the Merrill Center it was coming down buckets and they made us park as far as they could away from the center. We got soaked to the bone. I mean soaked, and the a/c was running high in there. My wife wanted to be there early so we wound up sitting wet and cold for an hour before the ceremony. After Nate walked part of us split and got the BBQ we ordered for his post graduate meal. Off he went to project grad that night, an all night affair where they had a number of prizes, swag bags and such. He wound up with an Ipod shuffle, 100 bucks in cash and lots of gift cards. Shoot he did better than I did on my last birthday! Go kiddo!

Maybe I shoudl graduate from something.

Tales of the Texas Highways...

Let me tell you something about Texas, it is big. Really big. For example, the drive from Houston to Los Angeles is about 1527 miles, give or take. And if you drive to the halfway point, it is EL PASO TEXAS! you are halfway there an you have not even left the state yet. This was my first drive corner to corner so to speak. I have driven the Houston-SoCal drive many times. Down I-1o into Blythe and beyond, down 8 into San Diego, and even across 40 once (that is the most interesting one). But from Houston to Lubbock there are no big interstate style mainline highways. We took a back country route up, and a fairly decent state highway, and yet we passed through many areas where we had to reduce speed to 35 or so miles an hour. Really wild.

However, the drive across texas is not with charms, for example we saw an 18 wheeler hauling an elephant. Okay sort of saw, the truck was next to us, and I looked into an open side door with one of those chain net lookng rigs, and there was a huge belly, two tree trunk legs and a skinny rope tail swinging around. Good enough for me, that is an Elephant! A little further down the road, we were admiring some really nice Longhorn cattle, one of which posed nicely for us, when I looked across the way and saw...zebras! Really, striped horse looking zebras. Of course we turned around and got pictures. This along with many different houses, cars, business and whatnot that lie along the road just to dazzle my curiosity. I have to say though, 9 1/2 hours in a car can kill a lot of curiosity, other than the wondering...are we home yet?

A long and winding road...

It was that, or What a Long Strange Trip it's been.
(I found I had never posted this one!)

If you read the post about driving to Lubbock,, we now headed home, let me tell you, leaving Lubbock at 4 PM (oddly enough the same time we left Houston two days earlier), with a plan to stop in Austin to see Oldest Boy Child as he moves into new apartment. Sure it is still a long drive, but with 2 1/2 hour off the tail, and some time in Austin, it sounded fine to me. Well just about 2 hours from Austin, MDW talks to her son, and he says don't bother, I am beat and I have to be at work at 6 AM. She says fine, and we decide to drive on to home. Then he calls back and says, whoops, Happy Mothers Day! All in all it was fine, we drove on, although I started feeling like I did not trust myself after a while and had to give her back the wheel. MDW did the lion's share of the driving, and is beat today. Looks like a day off for both of us.

Did I mention earlier that we found out my license has expired in March? whoopsie. I guess I know what I am doing later.

Oh yea, the odd parts. If you live in Texas and have never really gotten out and driven "corner to corner", you should really give it a shot. I would not do it in the heat of summer, but in May, the weather was fabulous, and the scenery was even more so. Now this may seem odd, but we saw zebras on the drive home. I am not joking, I will post the pictures soon.

American Airlines and Buddy Holly's Glasses

I am in Lubbock Texas today, a nice town really, home to the Buddy Holly center, and Texas Tech University. While those that know me know my affection for my Buddy, I am actually here to see my daughter graduate from Tech. She did, and it is awesome, and I am so proud of her. But this post in not about that, she deservers one of her own for that. This is about getting here...

Well we had a plan, we booked the flights in February, and it was all worked out. My Darling Wife (MDW from now on), and I were to fly from Houston to Dallas, and connect to Lubbock, my mom and stepdad were to meet us at the airport, their plane coming in about an hour earlier. Then we meet at the rental car counter and get a car and head to our hotel. Good plan. But "no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy".

We had some spectacular storms hit Houston Thursday night, but nothing on the far west side where we live. Just a cool Light Show from the lightning. While it snapped branches and made a bit of a mess in other parts of Houston. But no, this did not affect our flight. We left early, packed and not arguing, which is unusual for MDW and I when travelling. No big fights, just little stresses bubbling up, and I usually can't sleep before a trip. Come to think of it, I slept great. Should have been a sign. We got to the airport early, checked our bag, and wandered the airport, playing the usual games (where is he going, can you believe that outfit, that guy is a spy...), and wound up getting a snack at the McD's because we didn't know when we would get a chance again. On time and all is good, right?

No.

Mechanical problems had grounded our plane, and moved the departure time to 1:00, which was when we were to be catching our connecting flight them. Okay, go to the ticket counter and work on a new connection. Well they could not get us on the connecting flight, and well we could take one standy, no we will both go. Get us there, make it so. No we can't the plane has continued to push it's departure time further and further out. We get booked on a Continental flight instead, to try to connect with a 3 PM lubbock flight. Grabbed our bag and got over to Continental 12:00 PM for a 12:25 flight. Yeah right, that is going to happen. We did not even get through the ticketing process in by 12:30. Not to mention the security checkpoint. So we went back to American. The deal was, there was no way to guaruntee us making it to lubbock. They could get us to Dallas, but not guaruntee Lubbock. And we were not likely to make Lubbock before midnight. What to do?

We rented a car and drove.

By the time we got a rental car and got on the road it was now 4 PM, and we had at least 8 hours or more of driving ahead. Well it is a pretty drive, through a lot of Texas Hill country, and we both just rode along and made the best of it. A few tense moments, and a very tiring drive, we finally got here a 1:30 AM. So we left at 9:00 AM, and arrived here in Lubbock at 1:30, 16 1/2 hours to get a direct distance of 524 miles.

But it was worth it, and I would do it again, with no qualms. Okay, I would prefer to know we were going to drive, so I could skip the whole airport part, we would have been here by dinner time, no problem.

So now we are planning the trip home. I think we will stop by Austin and sleep there, as it will be late by the time we leave here. I have had a great time visiting with my Mom, and Stepdad, and enjoying the local cuisine and weather. I have no idea what the rest of the day has in store, but at least I got to see my lovely child walk her graduation, and I got to visit the Buddy Holly Center and see the actual strat Buddy used to play. Both were amazing.

Looking forward into the past

Okay, so I finally got a blog. The funny thing is, about 9 years ago I had a website, and I posted my thoughts and opinions and experiences on it, with pictures and stuff. But I had to edit it in an HTML editor and upload it and all that, and after a while I asked myself, is there any meaning to what I am doing? so I stopped.

Fast forward a few years and weblogs get started. What a concept, wish I had thought of it. Now after reading many really good blogs, like Sarah Lane's and then her and her husband's travel blog, I just decided, well this is as good a waste of bandwidth as anyone else's, so why not.

What am I about? what is this blog going to be about. Well I am about 5' 8" or so, and heavier than I like to be. I like cool guitars, and have special affection for the odd ones. I also just put in a pond in my back yard, that is a lot of pleasure for me, and I also work in the IT field and have some useful tips about computers and stuff. So I guess this site will be as attention deficit as I am. And that can be a good thing. Come along for the ride, let's see where we go from here....