tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567030986389389962024-03-18T22:28:20.820-05:00Let's Do It!Welcome to Erin's Home, where her family and friends follow her example of living with gusto every day. What verb do you choose?Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.comBlogger718125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-83836773792672645262016-12-28T14:35:00.002-06:002016-12-28T14:35:42.792-06:00Ed Clark, Christmas Guest<span style="color: #cc0000;">December 28, 2016</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCK9-aFr-UJJoeK332bQYktQQVXqtwklg4Qxkhf6mYBQ3hXFspvBmXNAiOznTtMhOCS1EKD-F_9lNbw-vhPIzQ4eNiZMyrTIoJlY6Pw0TUnNKn85EKHG2jkbFJxbTrZJA7UggWasCeQhyphenhyphenW/s1600/Ambassador+Ed+Clark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCK9-aFr-UJJoeK332bQYktQQVXqtwklg4Qxkhf6mYBQ3hXFspvBmXNAiOznTtMhOCS1EKD-F_9lNbw-vhPIzQ4eNiZMyrTIoJlY6Pw0TUnNKn85EKHG2jkbFJxbTrZJA7UggWasCeQhyphenhyphenW/s400/Ambassador+Ed+Clark.jpg" width="322" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Maybe non-Texans younger than a certain age have no idea who they are looking at in this photo.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Here's a hint: </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCK1GpLEH74GXLYy8Fxi7VUZhp-wiDcWlcOGjFEa7b_zkC5D5kWr_j9-NNmS5JSzGSzEzUSjWUfom_QjJOLq_8i4282QzxrxA9e8xaOUQZzbmWrxt7_Oaxbc85NgBO8b5kBtMOOCfzkZk_/s1600/Clark+and+Johnson+in+Canberra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCK1GpLEH74GXLYy8Fxi7VUZhp-wiDcWlcOGjFEa7b_zkC5D5kWr_j9-NNmS5JSzGSzEzUSjWUfom_QjJOLq_8i4282QzxrxA9e8xaOUQZzbmWrxt7_Oaxbc85NgBO8b5kBtMOOCfzkZk_/s400/Clark+and+Johnson+in+Canberra.jpg" width="285" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Here is the same man directly behind President Johnson's right shoulder outside the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Still stumped?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Then you may not be ready to understand why Davis named his Best Christmas Present Ever! after him.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Apparently, this is what every man wants (and coincidentally,what we gave Davis this year):</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXPheMO1roCNlY6Jeit6-tWmb97KSv920PrxihcHkqTdTsBkcEDv05DCHEofuf1v_ueFEBX28qiF83OIg7iWHDnQA6YHutvb89QyFmwdOSk7Ml-pTLT4Kx4Y4UqUHIzea9JLqTAyUhDNag/s1600/Ed+Clark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXPheMO1roCNlY6Jeit6-tWmb97KSv920PrxihcHkqTdTsBkcEDv05DCHEofuf1v_ueFEBX28qiF83OIg7iWHDnQA6YHutvb89QyFmwdOSk7Ml-pTLT4Kx4Y4UqUHIzea9JLqTAyUhDNag/s640/Ed+Clark.jpg" width="360" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">According to Davis's self report, this is a better gift than a kayak, an electric piano, a new interview suit (last year--and it worked!), or any of those other Must Have! gifts that I tracked down and procured over the years.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">The key to complete happiness was finding the perfect name. Suggestions poured in: Jeeves, Roomie, Alfred. These just didn't ring true.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Then, I thought of the man our friend Walter Hall called, The Fixer, Ed Clark. I thought that was his own personal pet name for his long time compadre, who, by the way returned the nickname favor by calling Walter Hall, The Little Loan Shark (which I always thought was sort of a funny thing to call one of the only solvent liberal Texas bankers I had ever met).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Anyway, I went looking for a photo of Ed Clark and discovered that The Fixer was what A LOT of people called him, as you can read in this <i>Texas Monthly</i> article published a couple of months after his death: <a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/death-of-a-fixer/#disqus_thread">"Death of a Fixer"</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">So now you know. For half a century, in Texas, if you needed something done or if you had a mess to clean up: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Sentinel SSm 4r', 'Sentinel SSm A', 'Sentinel SSm B', serif; font-size: 16px;"> He got things done, usually without leaving so much as a fingerprint. If you were Governor Jimmy Allred in 1935 and you needed someone to massage a few recalcitrant anti-New Deal state legislators, you called on your chief political adviser, Ed Clark. If you owned a chain of stores and needed to get the Office of Price Administration off your back in 1943, you contacted attorney Ed Clark, who would then use his influence to see that a crony was hired in the OPA’s Austin branch. And if you were Lyndon Johnson and you needed any number of things—money from Brown and Root, votes in Duval County, an endorsement from an East Texas newspaper—then Ed Clark was the man to call.</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #073763;">Now Davis and his Lyndon has what everyone needs, A Fixer. And I have been the lucky recipient of multiple test runs and my house is officially roomba'd.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;"><a href="https://r1---sn-q4fl6ne7.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?id=521b6b20f9543448&itag=22&source=picasa&begin=0&requiressl=yes&mm=30&mn=sn-q4fl6ne7&ms=nxu&mv=m&nh=IgpwcjAyLmRmdzA2KgkxMjcuMC4wLjE&pl=22&sc=yes&mime=video/mp4&lmt=1482935901214858&mt=1482955111&ip=50.24.188.104&ipbits=8&expire=1482984032&sparams=ip,ipbits,expire,id,itag,source,requiressl,mm,mn,ms,mv,nh,pl,sc,mime,lmt&signature=AF88E490A166A98A4BBF583C024127A52791FD49.4BF6E92A25D698A26A2357ADCABA5780452DB85F&key=ck2">Seven second demonstration.</a></span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">I'm so glad Ed Clark came to my house for Christmas.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span>Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-83674080332984603882016-12-26T16:27:00.000-06:002016-12-26T16:45:14.680-06:00Not Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). . .Seasonal Ordering Disorder (SOD)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;">December 26, 2016</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">I've been holding this entry for over a week because I didn't want to suffer from SOD. I don't know what I expected in mid-December when Walter and I took a rare four-for walk. Usually, our live are so hectic that we take our own turns walking Will and Teddy. I do long 6:00 am and 6:00 pm walks, and Walter does a much larger number of shorter walks to alleviate doggy boredom and to mitigate the need to pee.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Somehow, things had calmed down enough that we all went for a medium loop together, and just when we were about to swing back towards the house, we turned a little bend in the road and spotted something a *tad* out of the ordinary.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh61CbjXPksgfv89dpLiXB6D3H0V-9PHHIS8szTkMbDOD3MoqFL6Pra2VQ0gtuxT31UWYA9OULi3Bh_MMdalMBz30YnTAviopEldwq_tcO48NeUybMfIZ077kPpVbUIaJjZgv7PNh2IbZGp/s1600/Picture1226161505_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh61CbjXPksgfv89dpLiXB6D3H0V-9PHHIS8szTkMbDOD3MoqFL6Pra2VQ0gtuxT31UWYA9OULi3Bh_MMdalMBz30YnTAviopEldwq_tcO48NeUybMfIZ077kPpVbUIaJjZgv7PNh2IbZGp/s640/Picture1226161505_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">I first thought we had discovered Plato's Cave, which could have reasonably explained the previous election season and so much more. If you have forgotten, here is a schematic of Plato's Cave:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_mO0jrgQHMUujqMIIIznyBGOvlRpgDPWgc2jbrtX1sw4wTB7VrdxFJreXAJnU6rLhaRhmE1g3ribt150k_rnSsQ4AmT_xtEI8YG0Xtr_n_eZfB_5WwxBX4C3siPYGcfqeLVeRRJERU7bb/s1600/platoscave.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_mO0jrgQHMUujqMIIIznyBGOvlRpgDPWgc2jbrtX1sw4wTB7VrdxFJreXAJnU6rLhaRhmE1g3ribt150k_rnSsQ4AmT_xtEI8YG0Xtr_n_eZfB_5WwxBX4C3siPYGcfqeLVeRRJERU7bb/s400/platoscave.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">The prisoners can only discern what is on the wall in front of them. <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="background-color: #eeeeee;">These </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #073763; font-family: inherit;">prisoners would mistake appearance for reality. They would think the things they see on the wall (the shadows) were real; they would know nothing of the real causes of the shadows. It occurred to me that all 330,000,000 Americans could be sitting at the end of our road in a cave watching the shadow of reality.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #073763; font-family: inherit;">We walked on.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #073763; font-family: inherit;">And discovered something quite different. That's right, Teddy </span></span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;">Magdalen can now provide an authentic apostolic witness that the tomb is, in fact, empty. He ha</span>s</span> </span>risen, indeed. Willie Peter. . . well, as usual . . . he doesn't know whether to believe or not.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6PXy1MpJDDeFjs-1WK0v6F9NRegmBLJ5bavuBQrA4Tz9SdMdzPUDr9k2F1TzTNvUNmCyfZAFUGmWxOp3dyEWNqt14eLiQupaLwnYW6ATftplDU5KbLZLs3CmcZgiYThrL1J6Q5XPGwtXD/s1600/Picture1226161506_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6PXy1MpJDDeFjs-1WK0v6F9NRegmBLJ5bavuBQrA4Tz9SdMdzPUDr9k2F1TzTNvUNmCyfZAFUGmWxOp3dyEWNqt14eLiQupaLwnYW6ATftplDU5KbLZLs3CmcZgiYThrL1J6Q5XPGwtXD/s640/Picture1226161506_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">I always knew that Christmas was mysterious, but never did I know HOW MYSTERIOUS! </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Anyway, I thought it was too dangerous to conflate Christmas and other holidays, so I decided to wait before I shared this image. Then a few days later (maybe the 21st or 22nd) I started seeing photos like this on on my FB feed:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyXjz3Lz7KOmTcDcVtNJKR9o_nr6WwRPiFt9A5zt2my8jEPjBX2a7yOW7KiU9Gdn14zf2UkIIO-SCP6lggJy_wDlLXW4S3W0HgdPc0r24oSFUdfLZ6diiqIsREzPKGy86BArLfy9bX9IO_/s1600/15578208_10209096045653346_8181737318250624384_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="353" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyXjz3Lz7KOmTcDcVtNJKR9o_nr6WwRPiFt9A5zt2my8jEPjBX2a7yOW7KiU9Gdn14zf2UkIIO-SCP6lggJy_wDlLXW4S3W0HgdPc0r24oSFUdfLZ6diiqIsREzPKGy86BArLfy9bX9IO_/s400/15578208_10209096045653346_8181737318250624384_o.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">That iced it for me. If Walmart could put up Valentine's candy (and do you really think it will still be fresh in mid-February?) before Christmas, do I really have to wait until April for the Easter tail?</span>Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-46257896944213346652016-11-19T13:25:00.000-06:002016-11-19T13:25:04.709-06:00I Have Turned the Corner<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: slab serif, sans-serif;">I have found a way forward for my thinking. It is grounded in these quotes:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: slab serif, sans-serif;">Albert Camus wrote of the feats of Sisyphus pushing the boulder back up the slope<i> </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: slab serif, sans-serif;"><i>t</i></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: slab serif, sans-serif;"><i>hat the struggle of Sisyphus is enough to fill a man's heart.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: slab serif, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">just as Luke 21:19 says that </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>by your endurance you will gain your souls</i></span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>.</i></span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: slab serif, sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'slab serif', sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">And yet It will not be easy and it will take courage. Therefore, I look back to Camus who also wrote:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'slab serif', sans-serif; font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Courage is what love looks like when tested by the simple everyday necessities of being alive.</span></span></blockquote>
<em style="color: #333333; font-family: 'slab serif', sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"><br /></em><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'slab serif', sans-serif;">Susan Sontag also wrote of courage in her timeless and increasingly timely meditation on </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/12/05/susan-sontag-on-courage-and-resistance/&source=gmail&ust=1479669786520000&usg=AFQjCNFeBHPEgIAnDQU5wKmhWg7__ih2Ng" href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/12/05/susan-sontag-on-courage-and-resistance/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; font-family: 'slab serif', sans-serif; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">the power of principled resistance to injustice</a><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'slab serif', sans-serif;">,</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'slab serif', sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"> </span><div>
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<em style="color: #333333; font-family: 'slab serif', sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Courage inspires communities: the courage of an example — for courage is as contagious as fear.</span></em></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: slab serif, sans-serif;">I am ready.</span></div>
Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-76326507393283120592016-03-27T20:52:00.001-05:002016-05-09T19:06:39.805-05:00Making Sense of Family<script async="" defer="" src="//assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js"></script><span style="color: red;">March 27, 2016</span><br />
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">This isn't about what you think it is about. I'm not going to explain how you figure out exactly what to say when you have family in for the holiday weekend and you hear one sister, locked into the bathroom with her 11-year-old daughter say, "Tell me all the things you have learned from this incident" as said daughter stands dripping in her Easter dress haven fallen in the backyard lake. . . while at that precise moment you hear your other niece's voice from a different direction saying loudly to your other sister (her mother), "What do you mean you were changing Ava's diaper on the middle of the bed without a pad and she left a mess?"</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">In both instances, the correct response is to keep your head down and your eyes on your own paper! You can't actually make sense of your extended family in these situations, any more than you can when your own children or your own parents do things you prefer they hadn't.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Instead, I would like to provide a guide to the other part of family that never makes sense: what is a cousin "removed" and how is that different from a second cousin? Scan the chart below until you find "YOU ARE HERE." Then read up and to the right to figure out what to call your ancestors, and down and to the right to figure out what to call your descendants.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;"><a data-pin-do="embedPin" data-pin-width="large" href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/228065168607776028/"></a>
<br /> <br />This came to mind this morning when I took both my niece and my great niece to church. Of course, because they are both incredibly precious, </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">many of our friends and church cronies wanted to meet them. I started out saying, "This is my great niece Ava and my niece Emma." </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Every time I said that though, the little voice in my head said "Emma is just as great as Ava. . . that's not fair." So I amended my introduction and said, "This is my great niece Ava and my excellent niece Emma." But, of course, since we had spent most of Saturday making awful egg puns (Aren't we having an egg-strordinary time together? Do you know any egg yolks? Someone's got some eggs-plaining to do.), I kept slipping up and calling Emma my egg-cellent niece. Which felt a little weird and caused me to switch to "This is my great niece Ava and my fabulous niece Emma" and that worked just fine. </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">It worked so well that I figured I could follow the same logic at the next extended family reunion. That way I won't have to work out who might be my third cousin, just whether they are great, egg-cellent, or plain old fabulous. </span><br />
<br />Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-83621867374743632672016-03-17T20:46:00.001-05:002016-03-17T20:58:42.272-05:00Click. . . .Bait<span style="color: red;">March 17, 2016</span><br />
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">I'm a sucker. So are you, sometimes. I bet.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">What?</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Don't tell me you don't occasionally follow the white rabbit down the hole known as "clickbait." I always fall for the ones about "sarcasm font," "real meaning behind rock lyrics," and things that might be very funny: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/7eeYHst.png">Voice Activated Drone, Baby Monitor Win's Amazon's IoT Contest</a>.</span><br />
<span style="color: #551a8b; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 1px; margin-right: 0.4em; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: inherit;">Still don't know know what I'm talking about? <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/clickbait/">Your Favorite Celebrity Has a Secret Just For You!</a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763;">Okay. I just tricked you.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763;">We hate to get suckered. Almost as much as we despise certain political candidates. </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">So I started playing around with combining candidates and clickbait headlines. </span><br />
<div>
<ol>
<li><span style="color: #073763; font-family: inherit;">Trump Drowns Puppies. Poll Numbers Skyrocket</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">Kasich Staffer Explains Delegate Process to Boss: One State Not Enough to Secure Nomination</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763; font-family: inherit;">Clinton's 23 Secret Email Servers. Not Even Tech Support </span><span style="color: #073763;">Knows</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: inherit;"> About Them</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763; font-family: inherit;">Watch Cruz Eat a Booger</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763; font-family: inherit;">Sanders Furiously Wags Finger at Democratic Debate. Crowd Goes Wild.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763; font-family: inherit;">Revealed. . . How the Establishment of Both Parties Betrayed the American People</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763; font-family: inherit;">Revealed. . . How the American People Betrayed the Establishment of Both Parties</span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<span style="color: red;">Try it yourself in the comment section. It's actually fun and a sort of relaxing!</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #073763;">While we like to imagine the opponents of our fave candidate as despicable evil-doers and dufuses (dufusi?), we simultaneously (because we're optimists) hold out hope that the headline that catches our eye will hold the truth about our candidate that we have searched for like Diogenes. These are MUCH harder to write:</span></div>
<div>
<ol>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">Trump Knows Exactly What He's Doing and Saying. All Part of a Greater Plan</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">Kasich Earns Re-Do in Key Early States </span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">Archivists Discover Warehouse Full of Proof that HRC Is Trustworthy</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">53 Fellow Republican Senators Admit They Were Wrong About Cruz</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">Women, Blacks, Seniors, Latinos Volunteer for Sander's Revolution </span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">Path to the White House for Your Candidate "All Clear" </span></li>
</ol>
</div>
<div>
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: inherit;">Bonus Click: Leprechauns Claim Responsibility for the Current State of American Political Conditions. Also Promise Map to Pot of Gold.</span></div>
Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-32060394482642653272015-08-09T15:19:00.003-05:002015-08-09T16:43:54.529-05:00Position Opening--Best Dog in the Universe<span style="color: #cc0000;">August 9, 2015</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">If you go to the search box for this blog and type in "Willie," the first post that pops up will return:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #dadadc; color: #5c5c5c; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.456000328063965px;">Actually, the trip worked out just fine. Willie only ate a little woodwork around the kitchen bar area and Davis's second flip flop. He was not arrested, detained, incarcerated, nor did he become a ward of the state in our absence.</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #073763;">The second:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #dadadc; color: #5c5c5c; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.456000328063965px;">As you know, I had to do something about Willie. He doesn't chew stuff as often or as thoroughly as he used to (at one time I compiled this list of Willie Treats that he helped himself to), and in fact, the only materially important ...</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #073763;">And most entries that I mention Willie in prior to 2011 or 2012 are some variations on this theme:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #dadadc; color: #5c5c5c; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.456000328063965px;">Good call. We made it home, and I exercised The Wildman while Erin did her homework. Today Willie had only eaten about six mouthfuls of the bathroom cabinets, so I declared it a training victory.</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #073763;">Or this one:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #dadadc; color: #5c5c5c; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.456000328063965px;">Those of you who follow the Willie angle (DO NOT EVER, EVEN FOR A MOMENT, SWITCH THE "l" and the "e" IN THE PRECEDING WORD) are probably wondering what he did in our absence.</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #073763;">Or this one:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #dadadc; color: #5c5c5c; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.456000328063965px;">I had considered an entry organized around the theme, "Can Dogs Go to Hell?" in the aftermath of finding that Willie had eaten my Bible last week, but decided that weighty theological questions were out of place in an entry</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #073763;">I believe I once said:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #dadadc; color: #5c5c5c; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.456000328063965px;">Willie (named for William Marsh Rice) is a 10 month old Rhodesian ridgeback, lab, terrier mix. He brings the worst qualities of those three breeds and packages them in a 60 pound puppy body.</span><span style="background-color: #dadadc; color: #5c5c5c; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15.456000328063965px;"> </span> </blockquote>
<br />
<span style="color: #073763;">But all that was in the first half decade or so of his life when he was still a puppy (an increasingly old puppy). Later he became more attached to us. Less willful. Less destructive. More lovey-dovey. More companionable and obedient. Recently, Walter has taken to calling him the "Best Dog in the Universe." </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">It's probably best that you don't think about that too much because you really don't want to consider what that says about the state of academics. . . if one of the most prominent historians in the state can morph Will from "Wildman" to "Best" in any category that doesn't involve chasing, chewing, or general mischief or mayhem making.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Still, even I have been noticing that he wasn't providing that much fodder for the blog anymore. </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">That is, until today when we came home from church and lunch and found the miniblinds in our bedroom scroodled and scrunched in three different places and dog pee on the window sill.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
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<span style="color: #073763;">So now, apparently we have an opening at the top. Qualified candidates are invited to submit their CV's for Best Dog in the Universe. Dogs that climb and balance on foot stools to pee on window sills when taunted by naughty squirrels need not apply.</span></div>
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Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-29706804623378933072015-08-07T07:57:00.003-05:002015-08-07T07:57:52.053-05:00The Librarian's Secret<span style="color: #cc0000;">August 7, 2015</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">And so, my mother, a life-long reader and lover of books, finally discovered fulfillment beyond motherhood, beyond owning and running a successful business, beyond the satisfaction of rendering accounting figures "in balance." Her latest life chapter has been working as a college librarian, and I suspect she now knows what she has always known about libraries (as captured by this Joseph Mills' poem):</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/18/meanwhile-wendy-macnaughton-book/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span class="pinContainer"></span></a></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 1.5rem; margin-top: 1.5rem;">
IF LIBRARIANS WERE HONEST</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 1.5rem; margin-top: 1.5rem;">
<em>“…a book indeed sometimes debauched me from my work…”</em><br />–Benjamin Franklin</div>
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If librarians were honest,<br />they wouldn’t smile, or act<br />welcoming. They would say,<br /><em>You need to be careful.</em> Here<br />be monsters. They would say,<br /><em>These rooms house heathens<br />and heretics, murderers and<br />maniacs, the deluded, desperate,<br />and dissolute.</em> They would say,<br /><em>These books contain knowledge<br />of death, desire, and decay,<br />betrayal, blood, and more blood;<br />each is a Pandora’s box, so why<br />would you want to open one.</em><br />They would post danger<br />signs warning that contact<br />might result in mood swings,<br />severe changes in vision,<br />and mind-altering effects.<br />If librarians were honest<br />they would admit the stacks<br />can be more seductive and<br />shocking than porn. After all,<br />once you’ve seen a few<br />breasts, vaginas, and penises,<br />more is simply more,<br />a comforting banality,<br />but the shelves of a library<br />contain sensational novelties,<br />a scandalous, permissive mingling<br />of Malcolm X, Marx, Melville,<br />Merwin, Millay, Milton, Morrison,<br />and anyone can check them out,<br />taking them home or to some corner<br />where they can be debauched<br />and impregnated with ideas.<br />If librarians were honest,<br />they would say, <em>No one<br />spends time here without being<br />changed. Maybe you should<br />go home. While you still can.</em></div>
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Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-28346731020953058112015-07-02T17:46:00.000-05:002015-07-03T08:05:49.462-05:00Rock, Paper, Scissors<span style="color: #cc0000;">July 2, 2015</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763;">Many of you know that I spent the first half of the year working on increasing my arm length by operating Camp Mimi, a Special Long-Term Residential Camp for Incorrigible But Exceedingly Handsome and Lovable Beagles. </span><br />
<div>
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Now that my left arm (A.K.A. retractable leashing holding arm) is sufficiently stretched so that I can easily retrieve crystal from the top shelf of any cabinet while standing flatfooted, I have had to bid adieu to my special guest, Lyndon, my grandBeagle. Here he is right before the final boarding call for his drive to Ohio.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVv2qN9GJWtmsDEwLFWlssL9ZT-p6qOch_sHBQ2wgrJo_-RtR8h7HJORqbHtlXan1MKnwvKOMP9MwcHObOs5lDkyRUQFSWnHyl9PXecx_ZhUpDhSu_Fj5eoj9ZI-9cZ0KI6MgySuPFEH4-/s1600/IMAG0138.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="361" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVv2qN9GJWtmsDEwLFWlssL9ZT-p6qOch_sHBQ2wgrJo_-RtR8h7HJORqbHtlXan1MKnwvKOMP9MwcHObOs5lDkyRUQFSWnHyl9PXecx_ZhUpDhSu_Fj5eoj9ZI-9cZ0KI6MgySuPFEH4-/s640/IMAG0138.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="color: #073763;">Over the six months he stayed with us, we experienced many mirthful moments, many of which I am not quite prepared to relate, lest I trigger some of my latent PTSD symptoms. </span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">Did you know that some dogs can perform a quick Houdini if you let them wear their halters loose enough for comfort?</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">And that having bold squirrels in your yard induces hearing distortion and deafness in otherwise healthy beagles who slip their leash, causing them to hear "Run free, my friend, run free" instead of "Stop! Wait! Come Here! Now!"?</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">Did you know that some dogs have stressed-induced colitis and that car travel, thunderstorms, and having recalcitrant bunnies in the front yard can act as stressors? </span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">Did you know the College Station dog park does not have an escape-proof fence? </span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">Did you know that a rough housing dog can get his lower teeth stuck under another dog's collar and scare himself so much that he shakes his head, bucks like a bronco, and tries to run away, almost asphyxiating the much smaller dog?</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">The only story I actually feel comfortable telling is about our multiple games of rock, paper, and scissors every day. In this version of the game, Willie is the Rock. Lyndon is Scissors. And Teddy is Paper. The game might play out in terms of urine marking, where Rock would cover Scissors; Scissors would cover Paper; and Paper would cover Rock. (Can you imagine how slow it is walking three dogs who have to drip a bit of pee on every novel smell or sign of intruder?)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #073763;">It is also played as a roughhousing game. In any game of woof and chase, Willie would dominate Lyndon, Lyndon (would try to) dominate Teddy, and of course, Willie lays on his back, so that Teddy can dominate him. Here they are between rounds:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Teddy actually has the power to be dynamite in rock, paper, scissors, but she tried mightily not to play that way unless she truly had to.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Of course, the truth is that we all miss Lyndon now that he has returned to Ohio. And Davis has set up his bed so that Lyndon can keep up the squirrel and bunny watch, just like he did here:</span></div>
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Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-28545324473247369222015-05-09T14:32:00.000-05:002015-05-09T16:22:42.022-05:00Things That Make You Go Hmmn!?!<span style="color: red;">May 9, 2015</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">I left the office yesterday around lunchtime, so that Walter and I could get on the road to Denton for a friend's memorial service. That's not what made me go hmmn!?!.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">As I drove north on Harvey Mitchell (which for non-locals in a by-pass-type highway, two-full lanes in each directions, center turn lane, and full width paved shoulders), I saw a twenty-something guy walking on the shoulder by himself headed my same direction.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">He was turned out top to bottom in desert camo fatigues, less the lid, and had a full matching pack (probably ~40 lbs) strapped to his back. He stepped lightly, but purposefully, eyes set on the horizon In his right hand he held a standard (I'm guessing 8-10 lb.) sledgehammer, gripped like he was a golfer striding down the fairway with a nine iron.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2hilnAzAGxFUlAmxdsPUfYUsX0l7cqS59NT_rYom79d3g90pEP-ywrpxGNbkZXddAhS_5DE_-MANqzifRkbW8Qjuv1wssmlg98GnWyXzwYZ60G_Tcm2Q0Ul9m7PW-R1ZB5uMkfIOr8BpV/s1600/resin_sledge_hammer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="82" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2hilnAzAGxFUlAmxdsPUfYUsX0l7cqS59NT_rYom79d3g90pEP-ywrpxGNbkZXddAhS_5DE_-MANqzifRkbW8Qjuv1wssmlg98GnWyXzwYZ60G_Tcm2Q0Ul9m7PW-R1ZB5uMkfIOr8BpV/s320/resin_sledge_hammer.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">At the time, I thought to myself hmm!?! And I still can't think of a story that explains it.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">Your thoughts?</span>Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-2681530978806919702015-04-10T14:31:00.001-05:002015-04-10T14:31:56.502-05:00Keep Swimming<span style="color: red;">April 10, 2015</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">April comes around every Spring and reminds me why T.S. Eliot called it the cruelest month. </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">I struggle to get through to the end of the semester and to weather the emotional storm of the anniversary of Erin's death, all while being lured outside and away from the growing stacks of work by flowerbeds flooded with color and a landscape filled by every imaginable shade of green (and, inevitably, weeds that need my attention by threatening to block my view). I work to lift up and celebrate Davis's birthday, press through tax prep, and keep the stressed-out students on an even keel.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">As these days pass in a blur, I remind myself that I'm must be like some species of shark: constantly moving. Check this off. Handle that. Swim. Swim. Swim.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Here's another group of sharks I think of: The Bryan Soccer Club U-7 Sharks.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"> </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsNZapkvSgBOq6jOL7zOTFEASnwFum8Ir1FHVgWVEcgSGs49ChunlJckaS_xIi6nhlb5MIZiVtC2Lj2V9OiICzkD6ssYWdrHQAPvW0PYf9PPa69_XXl54su7o2UASyCihvtX7VkDKTL5n_/s1600/Sharks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsNZapkvSgBOq6jOL7zOTFEASnwFum8Ir1FHVgWVEcgSGs49ChunlJckaS_xIi6nhlb5MIZiVtC2Lj2V9OiICzkD6ssYWdrHQAPvW0PYf9PPa69_XXl54su7o2UASyCihvtX7VkDKTL5n_/s1600/Sharks.jpg" height="466" width="640" /></a></div>
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Dustin, Erin, Noah, Bailey, Tori, Jackson, Nico, Nestor, and Josh all were classmates, buddies, and teammates, and most will be graduating soon. Thanks for being my inspiration on this chore-filled day.</div>
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Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-53891448924651758992015-03-21T16:14:00.001-05:002015-03-21T16:41:09.414-05:00We Got Away<span style="color: red;">March 21, 2015</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">Davis works in math heaven. We visited his work space when we first got to Berkeley.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitUV3dfW1S0K0xBQLzqh1Rnf7rCkA0TAKDkd27yViogi_J21DSA_S83Z0nOl3Bs-EwC3B4JyKnKR-PRL10mBkAGl8Rp3xb-J6JLDYrusIuQtnhcIyh2hOdGL_-7oFu3l5W2MvghlH8-1ZG/s1600/IMG-20150315-00367.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitUV3dfW1S0K0xBQLzqh1Rnf7rCkA0TAKDkd27yViogi_J21DSA_S83Z0nOl3Bs-EwC3B4JyKnKR-PRL10mBkAGl8Rp3xb-J6JLDYrusIuQtnhcIyh2hOdGL_-7oFu3l5W2MvghlH8-1ZG/s1600/IMG-20150315-00367.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">He didn't actually believe me when I explained he would be just as well off in our living room in Bryan, since I also owned a set of <a href="http://www.zometool.com/">Zomes</a> and other math-oriented toys (including <a href="http://www.polydron.co.uk/polydron/polydron-basic-set.html">polydrons</a> that were not available at the MSRI) that I would set out on a coffee table for his building pleasure. I think it has something to do with the inspiring view:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Plus turkeys.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">The whole week wasn't wine and hikes. More like wine, hikes, and views.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">And time with Davis.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Teddy suffered mightily in our absence.</span></div>
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Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-82196796646685787962015-03-02T14:04:00.000-06:002015-03-02T17:49:10.639-06:00What Could Be Worse?<span style="color: red;">March 2, 2015</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">You may have read my post from yesterday and wondered "what could be worse" than being stuck for a day in a hotel room in a strange city with a stack of grading accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea. </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Well, of course, there are an infinite number of things that might be worse, including receiving a cancer diagnosis for your precious child and burying that child.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">But if you want to keep the conversation within the same order of magnitude of misery and awfulness, here's what could be worse:</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Finally boarding the plane home (wearing the clothes you slept in and sporting a hairdo that had not made contact with a hairbrush in longer than the average Jerry Lewis MDA telethon) flying to College Station and making the requisite 45 minute flight, only to hear the pilot's frustrated voice announcing that the visibility was too bad to land and the instruments to assist a blind landing were inoperable. . . and that we were flying back to Dallas.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Insert naughty words here: _______________________________.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">The good news is that I made it home by 11:00 last night.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">The bad news is that my suitcase didn't. Which would be okay, but I'm scheduled to leave again in less than 48 hours. This means that I will be chatting with baggage claims and bag status regularly until it turns up. Luckily, I have the airline 800 number memorized.</span>Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-22548978053704078952015-03-01T10:24:00.000-06:002015-03-01T10:24:33.463-06:00Good News, Bad News<span style="color: #cc0000;">March 1, 2015</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">The good news is that I received </span><span style="color: #073763;">an incoming phone call from an 800 number at 2:03 this morning canceling </span><span style="color: #073763;">my 10:15 a.m. re-booked flight from my canceled flight home yesterday. </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">And if you can get your head around the idea that a second canceled flight in twelve hours was good news, then I don't really have to explain why I my spending the first part of my day drying my undies with a blow dryer, wasn't as bad as it would seem, because at least I had a salvageable pair of underwear.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Why do people travel in the winter? And even more importantly, why do people eat shrimp potstickers from an airport hotel bistro this far from the coast (Grapevine). And if I had eaten the cheesecake first, would it have coated my stomach and protected me from the aftermath of the shrimp?</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">The only really bad news is that Davis is in the state for the weekend, but my delayed arrival home and weakened constitution mean that we will have to wait a little while longer to see him.</span>Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-46349118037018861732015-02-22T14:49:00.001-06:002015-02-22T15:03:24.546-06:00The Obese Squirrels--Not the Name of a Band<span style="color: red;">February 22, 2015</span><br />
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Don't you hate when people make excuses about things. . . when they won't take personal responsibility when clearly they need to? That's not me. I try to live by the mantra "own it." Not in the let's-go-shopping-and-buy-stuff sense, but in the just-face-up-to-your-mistakes sense.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">If I scramble eggs and forget to use Pam, I don't leave the skillet for Walter to scrub.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Every semester I fall on the sword on behalf of my entire profession for teaching the BCG model/GE business screen in the 80s, which ruined value in many good companies in the pursuit of short-term financial gain. Mea culpa.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">And after seeing the obese squirrels in my front yard yesterday, I'm here to say "I apologize. It was my fault."</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Who would have guessed that the simple combination of feeding the songbirds all winter and complying with the neighbor's not-so-friendly request to never, ever let our dogs outside without a leash would have created a public health menace in the squirrel world, but it has.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOIpT_Av85c1i317-INn8AIk1XxjEMAXjNVhoYYKvMvS3EN0HSziMBfagVb4PIXrZZuUmNIePEXc8O21kfTHmG_aOqNHZCqfRXbMgq_wfAdLCuTCH4yXbBqZ31YLHJQBQ1xxwZuIq4A3vi/s1600/fat-squirrel-jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOIpT_Av85c1i317-INn8AIk1XxjEMAXjNVhoYYKvMvS3EN0HSziMBfagVb4PIXrZZuUmNIePEXc8O21kfTHmG_aOqNHZCqfRXbMgq_wfAdLCuTCH4yXbBqZ31YLHJQBQ1xxwZuIq4A3vi/s1600/fat-squirrel-jpg.jpg" height="400" width="363" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is a borrowed photo image. The actual squirrels in my actual yard are actually much fatter.</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Walter tried to give me a pass on my culpability, suggesting that there must have run out of SBCP (squirrel birth control pills) at Squirrelgreens and CVSQ, and that what I was seeing out front was just an extraordinary number of pregnant squirrels, great with child.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">First, their numbers were impossible to justify the pregnancy theory. . . And their asses were too wide. . . and they had double and triple chins and dimples on their elbows and knees. . . and they were hiding extra servings from the all-you-can-eat birdseed buffets in their oversized purses and backpacks. . . and they were carrying super-sized drinks to wash it all down. </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">So now I will own it.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">It is my fault that legions of squirrel families are living without one or both of their parents who have succumbed (choose all that apply):</span><br />
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<ul class="_kYe" style="border: 0px; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><ul>
<li><span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2;">Coronary heart disease</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2;">Type 2 diabetes</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2;">High blood pressure</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2;">Dyslipidemia </span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2;">Stroke</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2;">Liver and Gallbladder disease</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2;">Sleep apnea and respiratory problems</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">It is also because of my personal actions that many squirrels must traverse the yard in small, but sturdy power chairs (and that the families must endure those half-hour infomercials teaching them how to get around squirrel medicare rules to acquire them without a co-pay).</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">I may have given rise to the squirrel mumu industry.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">Anyway, It's my fault. And I'm sorry.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">Next time you may be saying, "Who Let The Dogs Out?" but at least the squirrels will be getting some much needed exercise. </span></span></div>
Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-39374730996274818572015-02-05T09:16:00.001-06:002015-02-05T09:18:29.923-06:00Burn, Baby, Burn<span style="color: #cc0000;">February 5, 2015</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Quiz time.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">If you needed to start a fire and you didn't have a handy charcoal chimney starter or two in your pocket, what would you do?</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEireRtP-URzKmh5Fqmc-cnFqklMs5-x7qmLM_f3cp6zmmErK9ppCJSqRisSzKl9mfJ_PJImXeL_ldhtqJlb-xe4msR3sRqETtZAkM2PKphV6AzN60efmbTpcAhHmozgz0TQMOjReX0LMOI3/s1600/Weber-Chimney-Starter_RT-450x336.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEireRtP-URzKmh5Fqmc-cnFqklMs5-x7qmLM_f3cp6zmmErK9ppCJSqRisSzKl9mfJ_PJImXeL_ldhtqJlb-xe4msR3sRqETtZAkM2PKphV6AzN60efmbTpcAhHmozgz0TQMOjReX0LMOI3/s1600/Weber-Chimney-Starter_RT-450x336.jpg" height="297" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">And if you forgot to pack back issues of <i>The Eagle</i> or your scout manual that you could crumble up and light, what would you do?</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">If you didn't want to</span><span style="color: #073763;"> waste your slim supply of matches on something that wouldn't catch fire and burn steadily until other material could be added bit by bit until you finally had a roaring fire, what would you do?</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Forage around looking tiny dry sticks and lifeless bark? Hope to stumble across some cotton batting spilling out of an abandoned mattress?</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">The real answer is that you would hope you had a bag of Doritos handy.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Yesterday at the Carter Creek After School Program, Payton Foote led the kids in some survival activities and experiments. They built a variety of small piles of kindling to test which would be the best option as a fire starter. <b>The pile that consisted of 3 Doritos burned quickest, most robustly, and longest</b>--better than the piles dried bark or dead leaves or moss or paper or combo piles. </span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzR6KKyegNLRHkT_9d2wpRNeYgdBdYrwKyGgrgogmb4lJzITCShHuMg-bOQlucASph0JufMzTwh5VIDrPvjVw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Go figure. But it does give us all yet another reason to keep Doritos at hand. I wonder if Cheetos would work?</span></div>
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<br />Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-31263557426692931682015-01-27T19:04:00.001-06:002015-01-27T19:05:48.648-06:00Run or Walk, You Choose<span style="color: #cc0000;">January 27, 2015</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">In honor of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birthday today, I'm going to talk about things completely unrelated to Mozart.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">For instance, why didn't Davis name his dog Houdini instead of Lyndon. . . probably more fitting. Although Walter and I may have caught on that Davis was planning a middle-age fitness program for us by letting Lyndon stay at our house for the semester and didn't want to give away the surprise that we would frequently be running willy-nilly cross country, scaling fences, shoving our way through brush, and generally tracking down a jetting dog who has escaped. We keep upping the ante on security and then looking at each other and saying "Again?"</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">I also had the moment on the phone this afternoon with KBTX morning show reporter and anchor, Kessler McLaughlin, who said, "Can we do the interview at your house a little before 8:00 tomorrow morning?" and I thought, "Isn't that about the time when Lyndon stirs up Willie and Teddy into a baying/howling/barking furor over the passing through the yard of "Dog Friend" and the simultaneous invasion of the morning squirrel brigade?" Then I thought, with modern technology, the television station can probably dub over any background noise, as long as they keep it below the 130 mark (which they usually do, unless the squirrels are particularly naughty and press their noses against the porch door and stick their little tongues out).</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkaw79xg3-WGpJyWeZaOYQb0pZSIUWQs6Sc-MjIB8aG_PD2oAYiBw75D2taiXtH_kyT_hOaRpGAvEfVd_lea0LWGufInorJOJxbrb7w7xwbmVL6tZV-_9yfoARBGONPlY1htkuMeNYhLbY/s1600/fig3.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkaw79xg3-WGpJyWeZaOYQb0pZSIUWQs6Sc-MjIB8aG_PD2oAYiBw75D2taiXtH_kyT_hOaRpGAvEfVd_lea0LWGufInorJOJxbrb7w7xwbmVL6tZV-_9yfoARBGONPlY1htkuMeNYhLbY/s1600/fig3.gif" height="400" width="307" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Mainly, I want to rejoice in the wide range of friends and supporters who are rallying to put on and participate in a Fun Run/Walk in Erin's memory, just in time to give all of her friends a great send off in their last semester of High school (which is why I have to deep clean my house AND work on maximizing my beauty potential between now and breakfast tomorrow, so I can be ready to love the camera).</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga3vQeK24op8hgsG-zIRjpSNy6IFJ0CNFz8Ed22eQ7vNNVbN0nW-B3r3xUnQwd-LvZ3IPbawDHCjh7ok1153AHpddSnEHjlxSRdF-0j-k0j3lwcMTM5TiSFkYTnweyL1B2FzAj5HUAMHUX/s1600/Erin's%2BDream%2BRace%2Bflyer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga3vQeK24op8hgsG-zIRjpSNy6IFJ0CNFz8Ed22eQ7vNNVbN0nW-B3r3xUnQwd-LvZ3IPbawDHCjh7ok1153AHpddSnEHjlxSRdF-0j-k0j3lwcMTM5TiSFkYTnweyL1B2FzAj5HUAMHUX/s1600/Erin's%2BDream%2BRace%2Bflyer.jpg" height="640" width="458" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Here are some key rules:</span></div>
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<ol>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">You don't have to run.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">You don't even have to walk very fast.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">You have to give me a big hug when you pass me.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">Or an elbow bump if you are going too fast.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">If you have a pair of sneakers that don't work for you anymore, bring them to donate to Dunk Your Kicks. Donated shoes will support low-income cancer families at Texas Children's in Erin's memory.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">If you are reading this, Erin probably considered you a friend. And that means you are invited! </span></li>
</ol>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Some of you might not have an outing to College Station in your travel plans. You can still support the race, by registering as "Donation Only." If you want to send a card or remembrance, I will take them to the race that day and share them in a display. The race benefits the </span><a href="http://cac2.org/">Coalition Against Childhood Cancer</a><span style="color: #073763;">, which, as Walter will tell you, is how I spend my non-paid work time these days.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">So, what do you have to do? </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">GO TO: </span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://erinsdreamrace.strikingly.com/">http://erinsdreamrace.strikingly.com</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: large;">AND CLICK THE "TAKE ACTION" BUTTON</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">or</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;">CLICK HERE TO </span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://thedriven.net/Erins-Dream-Race.race_reg/eid/1262145678?">TAKE ACTION</a> </span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="color: #073763;">TO REGISTER!</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-15152721747694348872015-01-05T14:29:00.002-06:002015-01-05T14:49:00.629-06:00As Promised. . . The Family Gallery<span style="color: red;">January 5, 2015</span><br />
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Here I go, spoiling you again by posting so soon.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">But I did promise to give you an update when all the Lego family portraits were finished.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Here is our foursome (at a distance, so you can tell who we are):</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiruuNrcgtqucsRlAOID1dl25Fjvjw9RU98ssw1WnujCJRGVSA-9dsWgA2aQqf4DNWLds5Ja04XkgphNhMpHZQFLMv5OHoOjr77C8sqTKKVO-OwtDYXJ-W8jPQfvqvq3oa6OzicWP52EhiC/s1600/Picture0105151344_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiruuNrcgtqucsRlAOID1dl25Fjvjw9RU98ssw1WnujCJRGVSA-9dsWgA2aQqf4DNWLds5Ja04XkgphNhMpHZQFLMv5OHoOjr77C8sqTKKVO-OwtDYXJ-W8jPQfvqvq3oa6OzicWP52EhiC/s1600/Picture0105151344_1.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">And here we are, a little closer and with a beagle bonus.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz4KqZkcWqVlVKe4RxjqJ9uDubmLX55G00tflm7UKXw6d75cfGKHV5jK21ZO5RoUKb_lO5QG7wrCY8ZgB5UdLNeoWItDGGK8hRsdzdfHqcrex683bCVpETAckq-e2QI8tqrj3q7mps8MqO/s1600/IMAG0386.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz4KqZkcWqVlVKe4RxjqJ9uDubmLX55G00tflm7UKXw6d75cfGKHV5jK21ZO5RoUKb_lO5QG7wrCY8ZgB5UdLNeoWItDGGK8hRsdzdfHqcrex683bCVpETAckq-e2QI8tqrj3q7mps8MqO/s1600/IMAG0386.jpg" height="640" width="362" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">And here is the work in progress (Emma, building herself):</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEF2PHKoji5l4maMrm39DGDZN5qwI4FZu17IYjabWKd2ttqldgMp4pt_erT2JuxtZthGY1tFXiX1ZaGlUokIxP5mZwEwdNLOcObqvHIkDKEVIa5Bd8reBzkIu3NkySqVNxtiAqspbhP5OC/s1600/IMAG0376.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEF2PHKoji5l4maMrm39DGDZN5qwI4FZu17IYjabWKd2ttqldgMp4pt_erT2JuxtZthGY1tFXiX1ZaGlUokIxP5mZwEwdNLOcObqvHIkDKEVIa5Bd8reBzkIu3NkySqVNxtiAqspbhP5OC/s1600/IMAG0376.jpg" height="640" width="362" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-88398931697523520472015-01-03T17:11:00.004-06:002015-01-03T17:14:53.460-06:00My Christmas Gift Is Better than Yours<span style="color: red;">January 3, 2015</span><br />
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Maybe you think this is going to be a spirit-filled post larded with warm feelings about being together with friends and family in the holiday season. </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Maybe you saw on Facebook that we deferred the celebration of Christmas by a week plus because our collective schedules didn't line up until the new year, and you think I am about to wax on about how the 25th is an arbitrary day to celebrate, and how we defied convention and harvested the blessings of a less-stressed day.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">Maybe I have lulled you into the mindset that I am about to talk about perfect love or the wonder of thirty married Christmases or memories of Christmases with our complete family.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763;">You certainly don't think I'm comparing what I got to what you got . . . but actually I am . . . and I haven't even got it yet.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763;">For the last two months, Davis has been planning our family Christmas present. He found individual photos of family members, pixilated them, and built algorithms to translate the pixilated photos into colors in the Lego color palette. Here's an example:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSgakE_xHNTTzT_VM4riKLcvrav5_6B0W1qqBrfj6LF_wXiixt3u4oJrF1uexLLPK4ab_s9Fr8vHTJx6KDbiti3IySONGTazUA-XiRAx4gqipTWnQfJ4txTzlPhuULMHWmlVWTQJbbHZt0/s1600/Screenshot+2015-01-03+18.07.52.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSgakE_xHNTTzT_VM4riKLcvrav5_6B0W1qqBrfj6LF_wXiixt3u4oJrF1uexLLPK4ab_s9Fr8vHTJx6KDbiti3IySONGTazUA-XiRAx4gqipTWnQfJ4txTzlPhuULMHWmlVWTQJbbHZt0/s1600/Screenshot+2015-01-03+18.07.52.png" height="320" width="264" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Then, he ordered Lego pieces from all over the world (more than 6000 of them) that matched our various complexions, hair coloring, and shadowing and had them delivered to our house. And today he and Emma got to work on this year's Christmas Project--A Family Photo Gallery Rendered in Lego Brick (1x1s):</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjooXx9rVRSuIQ8tkESFddw_q4uOJGmLXpxtTzZx1yS6i1SDJu_JCjSPugKurUiapcJ1HhyRo8SJ2-FbD0W_T-x_jdpesprMETGWscVc1RSjj3RuflJEzifOU_vQs-1hYmbWbc0jVXqs0JR/s1600/Picture0103151606_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjooXx9rVRSuIQ8tkESFddw_q4uOJGmLXpxtTzZx1yS6i1SDJu_JCjSPugKurUiapcJ1HhyRo8SJ2-FbD0W_T-x_jdpesprMETGWscVc1RSjj3RuflJEzifOU_vQs-1hYmbWbc0jVXqs0JR/s1600/Picture0103151606_1.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Since they haven't completed the full gallery yet, you still have time to whip your children into shape so that you have a chance to get an even better gift than I am going to have. Let me know when you are ready to concede. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">I will post the full six lego portraits when they are done.</span></div>
Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-7824001847314072392015-01-02T08:46:00.000-06:002015-01-02T12:03:04.959-06:00"Stop Putting Hot Air on Me"<span style="color: red;">January 2, 2015</span><br />
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span><span style="color: #073763;">Years ago, when we commuted regularly between Nashville and Bryan with a pre-school-aged Davis, a Rottweiler, and a back up dog, Davis would sit strapped into his car seat booster, with Dolly, the Rott on the seat next to him on one side, and Sparky, the back up, on the other. Inevitably, he would tire of Dolly panting in his ear and </span><span style="color: #073763;">whine, "Mommm! Dolly is putting hot air on me. Make her stop!!"</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">And as annoying as that was, you haven't lived until you have spent twenty-three hours in a crowded, mid-sized sedan with an anxious, hyperventilating beagle and a grown man who would prefer to stick a fork in his eye than be trapped in a car with an anxious, hyperventilating beagle. But that is the nature of parenting and grandparenting.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">Davis has a very cool opportunity and honor to spend this spring at the MSRI (<a href="http://www.msri.org/web/msri">Math and Science Research Institute</a>) at Berkeley where he will devote his time to "furthering the appreciation of mathematics." Which provides Walter and me with the very cool opportunity and honor to spend the spring with Lyndon, where we will devote our time to "furthering our appreciation of beagles." It also explains why we spent our Christmas vacation chauffeuring a dog through mid-America.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">Little did we know that the normally charming and very affectionate Lyndon is not enamored of car travel. Of course, once he was out of the car at the end of each leg of our journey from Ohio to home, he no longer resembled a satan-beagle mix and reverted to his old self:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgup0q7Pl2ydWO9oRXbsoiwCpIO8Y32zU5qV-9ElBxzzuiO_-tEZrs5Gy7wzg1pnncJbnPSGrFTpNOxg7rBJeVd4C2daxxlfCt6qOnWy_J2Slah-vewb4NLQP4yRNw1JGNYje54EsEg_lEl/s1600/Picture0102150810_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgup0q7Pl2ydWO9oRXbsoiwCpIO8Y32zU5qV-9ElBxzzuiO_-tEZrs5Gy7wzg1pnncJbnPSGrFTpNOxg7rBJeVd4C2daxxlfCt6qOnWy_J2Slah-vewb4NLQP4yRNw1JGNYje54EsEg_lEl/s1600/Picture0102150810_1.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Teddy and Willie were chuffed to see us when we rolled in on Monday and were tolerant enough of Lyndon. We are each, in our own way, helping the young dog adapt to his new "normal." Walter, for his part, has walked Lyndon (as Peter Townsend has been singing since 1967) "miles and miles and miles and miles." </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">I have become the table top and counter police. Lyndon has an NFL-worthy vertical leap and can get up on the dining room table without the assistance of a step stool (or anything else). You may also recognize that a beagle's keen sense of smell allows it to recognize if so much as a crumb is left for sampling. As I do not want a dog snuffling around where I eat (much less nicking a slice of my spinach pizza when I turn my back, which happened within an hour of our arrival home on Monday), I have had to up the frequency and vigilance of my kitchen patrol.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Willie is leading by example, shining as the "good" dog in a family role that has been a long time coming. We were counting on Teddy to be the Mistress-in-Charge of Lyndon's education, but she wrenched her back in the first evening's rough housing session and has been prescribed bedrest and high quality meds for the next week. She does not seem to mind the pampering.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">For those of you who wondered where I had disappeared off to at the end of the summer, I was not kidnapped nor did I check myself into the Magic Mountain. Mainly, I took a break to refresh my writing voice and perspective and tend to both my paid and unpaid work. If it makes sense to retroactively piece together some of those activities over the next few weeks or months I will. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Otherwise, thanks to my loyal readers who have continued to check in to see if I have any nonsense to report and Happy New Year to both of you! </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-78837036292791977122014-07-24T18:13:00.004-05:002014-07-24T18:51:11.414-05:00Vacay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;">July 24, 2014</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">We managed to slip away last week. The stated reason was to attend Uncle Dave's 90th birthday in Amarillo. That, of course, was fabulous. But if you have already made it as far as Amarillo, why not jump off into New Mexico? And we did.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">First, we stopped in to see our great friends Carla and Larry just above Santa Fe to admire their new place, get to know their new dogs better, and share their view. I will put a photo of their view here soon.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Then we headed to Taos. Here's our view of Taos Mountain:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ZzO3M-veOXMGj285pnD6cgGM2x3pvh83Amn_a2YFLQ95Yg4-jzVTfBKvm-Zl0pSh2MsGq2GASjFvX7Z2AYwJtbc8GYyf7xuabMmIsB7DgUIQmhayjJm_JiEhOg2VQQXMzjiGhYzahl86/s1600/100_0322.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ZzO3M-veOXMGj285pnD6cgGM2x3pvh83Amn_a2YFLQ95Yg4-jzVTfBKvm-Zl0pSh2MsGq2GASjFvX7Z2AYwJtbc8GYyf7xuabMmIsB7DgUIQmhayjJm_JiEhOg2VQQXMzjiGhYzahl86/s1600/100_0322.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Walter and I come to New Mexico mainly to soak up cool air (52 degrees on the balcony this morning during coffee) and to hike. I picked the hike today: <a href="http://www.taostrails.com/italianos.html">The Italianos Canyon Trail</a>. It had numerous water crossings and some rather challenging switchback courses. Walter and I had quite a discussions about whether a donkey could get up the trail to carry chain saws and equipment to clear felled trees and such. We decided "no."</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">All along the way, I thought we were on a "moderate" trail, and I kept thinking how poor my wind was and how out of shape I was, and how I probably couldn't make it a mile on some of the "strenuous" trails any more. It turns out that that kind of thinking was very similar to what I experienced when Davis was born.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">And, in fact, there may be a definite advantage to hiking a strenuous trail while thinking it is only moderate.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">I labored for about an hour and a half and couldn't imagine going another 22 hours like the birthing coach said was typical for first moms. He was born after a total of an hour and fifty minutes labor.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">The rating for Italianos Canyon is, in fact, strenuous. I feel better now.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">One of the things about Taos, is that they know how to do doors. This is a small sample of the dozens of doors we walk by in the three or four blocks between our hotel and the plaza. I suspect that anyone could be an optimist if you lived in a place where the possibilities of opening a door was this appealing.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiKy4cSn3A9ib3oOawiqNdyEsuYK_C28RnJzNoJtkkjHTj1yI_R48xzY2Dxi8ioJZUyv7J_eNWZogm9aZyKUY38jGH6U6q3g00lBIwtYsK4_9jgisJ9c2x-n2W90w4YJUUbZ38xxDTaUpc/s1600/doors.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiKy4cSn3A9ib3oOawiqNdyEsuYK_C28RnJzNoJtkkjHTj1yI_R48xzY2Dxi8ioJZUyv7J_eNWZogm9aZyKUY38jGH6U6q3g00lBIwtYsK4_9jgisJ9c2x-n2W90w4YJUUbZ38xxDTaUpc/s1600/doors.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">This is the way my life has been, especially the last few years. A door shows up waiting to be opened, and invariably, I walk through. Although it is the subject of another post, here is my most recent door:</span></div>
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<a href="http://cac2.org/"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIBQ7QJc6PM0GOnk5N_02cRZ8fq6G2bR6BLYS9OGF6KPG9sB_mPouj1sYJdptRbVY-iElSr8j3KjH0S7gk3_00E9-PUvLKuyaxu-N0uX3epiAQBtcLfUewp_1xTsaRgv5MfM9IhV4k9ZjI/s1600/CAC2+logo.jpg" height="320" width="315" /></a></div>
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<br />Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-39851298308235545062014-06-20T06:39:00.003-05:002014-06-20T07:22:22.384-05:00Lost<span style="color: #cc0000;">June 20, 2014</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">When your child dies from cancer, you focus moment to moment. You might have been told it was coming, but you didn't believe it.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">You wonder if you can I bear to move the sneakers away from the backdoor where she always kicked them off. What about facing the grocery aisle with the favorite Del-Dixie baby dill pickles or green, NOT PURPLE, Gatorade?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">Moment to moment turns into day to day. Can I face Mother's Day? What about Halloween with no costumes? How do you work up to putting the Christmas ornaments on the tree?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">You heal and you grow and you love your child who isn't there. Then one day you read that the average age of a child lost to cancer is 8. Erin almost made it to 12!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">You also read what that means. <b><i>71 YEARS OF LOST LIFE WHEN A CHILD DIES OF CANCER.</i></b></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZKXuRR904MgxvW9yo5b23kUjT_C3IrsO_casuHcAZQAZekKcabBwvZhL1lxuT3K3CaMI-djwAD7SqTKNAR-BlgsbWnAGimDQvHBV2jALpD6O6CMQ7KVZzaySyNgDkDw1IlTi_oxfg3mWn/s1600/Slide1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZKXuRR904MgxvW9yo5b23kUjT_C3IrsO_casuHcAZQAZekKcabBwvZhL1lxuT3K3CaMI-djwAD7SqTKNAR-BlgsbWnAGimDQvHBV2jALpD6O6CMQ7KVZzaySyNgDkDw1IlTi_oxfg3mWn/s1600/Slide1.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">So here I sit on Erin's 17th birthday, no longer struggling with the moment to moment or even the day to day, but wondering what we lost over the last five years--classes, friends, drivers' ed, soccer, prom. And wondering even more what the world lost by her missing the next six and a half decades.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">Folks, we have to do better. We can't just go throwing decades of life away, when there is a chance to invest in more effective treatments, and it would cost much less than many of the things we currently spend on as a nation. #StepUp.</span><br />
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Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-13747450425049431112014-06-16T09:54:00.001-05:002014-06-16T09:54:50.101-05:00Go Spurs Go!<span style="color: #cc0000;">June 16, 2014</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">Happy Birthday Mom!</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM51C2PWehbqXK_jKysgj8coRNJ4Cg0N3IG5i1Dvnx05RD6uUGS7fVqUkpF9pPGXNM54GTzRD8DKCCpgKFS6bWq4TvSECtgl8thSzZTFgjqpCw73kdfe1DrvgQR_ukKMVPGZweIy_XyDU/s1600/Moo_at_Easter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM51C2PWehbqXK_jKysgj8coRNJ4Cg0N3IG5i1Dvnx05RD6uUGS7fVqUkpF9pPGXNM54GTzRD8DKCCpgKFS6bWq4TvSECtgl8thSzZTFgjqpCw73kdfe1DrvgQR_ukKMVPGZweIy_XyDU/s1600/Moo_at_Easter.jpg" height="640" width="345" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">And because it is Monday, your featured Map (states that support the Spurs v. states that support the Heat):</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGQwrk231_vbVTLajKyO8RS4bZdVk3i7Oi6Z01mlOLWSB67pQLkMQIjr_nI5lhqr2dyFFA4PR-TiufeoZeN3vxjwrKMSfV720F5TFFPZ6ewqUXmhN0MXg-_4iWbjlmlUvzcVmLaNyNSFHl/s1600/nba-finals-heat-spurs-facebook-map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGQwrk231_vbVTLajKyO8RS4bZdVk3i7Oi6Z01mlOLWSB67pQLkMQIjr_nI5lhqr2dyFFA4PR-TiufeoZeN3vxjwrKMSfV720F5TFFPZ6ewqUXmhN0MXg-_4iWbjlmlUvzcVmLaNyNSFHl/s1600/nba-finals-heat-spurs-facebook-map.jpg" height="358" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">As you can see, this morning, slightly over half the states, and probably a much larger than 50% portion of the basketball watching country woke up knowing they backed the wrong team.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Go Spurs Go!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Walter, Davis, and I won't take complete credit for the Spurs win last night or for the series, but we did our part.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Starting with hand-made, silk-screened fan gear (thanks Davis!):</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidgt8c9CmuR2WOBfyf07APPikBE45XqmK2j6WcOSYIJvu8q7sfQVYFBy3DUq-J0XAgI_ItqPWATT-1-N46KxkU5kxsEbuNaZhPl1CxXsw-PUvVr8LelmcPyLFUM-DQ1JIa0EtyF-KU6XLY/s1600/164642_773178746461_1751029175_n-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidgt8c9CmuR2WOBfyf07APPikBE45XqmK2j6WcOSYIJvu8q7sfQVYFBy3DUq-J0XAgI_ItqPWATT-1-N46KxkU5kxsEbuNaZhPl1CxXsw-PUvVr8LelmcPyLFUM-DQ1JIa0EtyF-KU6XLY/s1600/164642_773178746461_1751029175_n-1.jpg" height="640" width="380" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">We were also disciplined and dutiful. We followed out game day rituals, eating the right foods and getting the right attitudes on.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Game time was even more crucial. Walter watched alone, so he could bring his laser focus to bear at critical moments. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">The other five of us (me, Davis, Teddy, Willie, and Lyndon) became role players channeling whoever was on the floor at the time. Teddy makes an incredible Patty Mills, and her encouragement on his three-point shooting last night almost required umbrellas all around to protect us from the shots that were raining down. And if you think that Manu Ginobili could have racked that monster dunk to ignite the Spurs recovery without channeling Willie's inner fierceness, you may be mistaken. Lyndon was best at BoBo Diaw, always on the move and helping everyone out.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Davis and I did bench squats during time outs and commercial breaks just to demonstrate our mind was right (did you notice the bad start? Davis was distracted by his cell phone and some lively texting exchanges and did not do the requisite exercises. I know Pop was relieved when Davis remembered his role on the team and got caught up on his squats.)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Walter wouldn't let us join him upstairs until things were completely in hand. We tried with three minutes remaining, but he made us wait a couple of possessions more, JUST TO BE SAFE. In the end, we all howled together, except for Lyndon who, like Kawhi Leonard, may not have learned how to celebrate yet. He's young. He'll figure it out.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span>Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-81244964910953186262014-06-09T09:36:00.001-05:002014-06-09T09:36:51.067-05:00Map It. . . Monday<span style="color: #cc0000;">June 9, 2014</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">I know the world (or at least the subset of the world that entertains itself with social media and online photo sharing) has special days of the week. Who doesn't want to spice up their otherwise mundane Thursdays with embarrassing or personally revealing pictures of themselves from years past, a la Throw Back Thursday? Until I looked it up, (<a href="http://www.hitfmradio.com/a-hashtag-for-every-day-of-the-week/">#hashtag for every day of the week</a>), I didn't actually know that I could have been chronicling this blog and my Facebook and twitter accounts in a much more systematic way all these years.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span><span style="color: #073763;">But considering that I'm a pretty poor photographer and that I haven't historically carried a camera NOR REMEMBERED TO USE IT IF I LUGGED IT ALONG in the first place, I don't have a huge ready stock of photos to share. Did I mention that my elegant and precise system of filing all my hard copy, pre-digital photos involves packing boxes and my personal promise that one day I was going to scan, label, add snappy captions, and place them all in acid-free photo albums, EMPHASIS ON "ONE DAY"?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">But I do like the idea of a little structure (Katherine Luquette, stop snickering!) and I am crazy in love with maps</span><span style="color: #073763;">, so I am implementing Map-It-Monday. Here's the first installment, which is a visualization of the ratio of bars to grocery stores in the United States. It's easy to see Wisconsin. Which Texas dot do you think represents Brazos County?</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMTdLb5iFXIS-GfN2hVqmrhIhY3iU3KedeU9_plXC1VckspitDkfDB3pSFQ9qLLMpYY64EBwBhKYYq7jY-w5Tj33Ym6T-M6pigrIXINU72vla1tJ3WMRQgs5bX0J8d2V_60vjOwiuumi45/s1600/us.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMTdLb5iFXIS-GfN2hVqmrhIhY3iU3KedeU9_plXC1VckspitDkfDB3pSFQ9qLLMpYY64EBwBhKYYq7jY-w5Tj33Ym6T-M6pigrIXINU72vla1tJ3WMRQgs5bX0J8d2V_60vjOwiuumi45/s1600/us.png" height="428" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">You can explore other Nathan Yau's similar maps of other countries here: </span><a href="http://flowingdata.com/2014/05/29/bars-versus-grocery-stores-around-the-world/">http://flowingdata.com/2014/05/29/bars-versus-grocery-stores-around-the-world/</a>.</div>
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Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-70417884346078259432014-05-29T20:02:00.000-05:002014-05-29T20:33:43.622-05:00Sleep and Share<span style="color: #cc0000;">May 29, 2014</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">Little known fact: </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">If you are highly motivated, you can sleep on a cot, with a beagle, with phone alarms set for 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. and the next day believe you had a restful and an unremarkable night.</span>Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-656703098638938996.post-77200219252153436672014-05-26T19:20:00.001-05:002014-05-26T19:20:24.165-05:00Drive<span style="color: #cc0000;">May 26, 2014</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">I know this sounds too bad to be true, but for the third time in the last 21 months we are in Columbus attending Davis's knee surgery. ACL repair tomorrow. Report to check in at 5:00.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">This time it's a little different. I don't know if you have heard, but Walter and I have a new business partnership: the Doggie Summer Camp and Orthopedic Rehab Service. Davis and Lyndon are our first customers!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">As soon as they are travel ready, we'll head back to Texas.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">We have spent the last two days driving for the pick up! I can tell it was about 21 hours in the car because I'm a bit stiff through the hips, shoulder, and neck. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">And, with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, I can tell I drove through east Texas because I saw:</span><br />
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<li><span style="color: #073763;">a bank advertising on a billboard with a picture of a ginormous chicken and the words "we delight in poultry financing."</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">a second billboard $895 CREMATION as the only words besides the company name.</span></li>
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<span style="color: #073763;">I can tell I drove through Tennessee because there were more Cracker Barrels, Waffle Houses, and Shoneys than there were Starbucks.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Also, can anybody tell why Ohio farm houses are white and Ohio barns are red?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Final Thought: I think people in Brazos County should pay me to go out of town. When we went to Galveston week before last, it rained 5 inches in Bryan. I understand that the rain started today at noon and has already rained a couple of inches with more expected tomorrow.</span></div>
Vickiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03232676927126653489noreply@blogger.com3