Apopheniac

Storm cell moves through

Well we had a little high plains weather move briskly through this evening about sunset. It was just 15 minutes of wind, rain and a scattering of light hail and it was gone, leaving the sun alone in the sky to slide below the horizon in a burst of glory.

I was pulling into the parking lot at the grocery store as it arrived and watched a six-foot tall cart of plants on wheels go rolling by in the wind and fall over on an SUV and an Altima.

I am consistently amazed at how weather just forms up and blows through here. You can see above that the people just south of us never even lost the sunshine. A farmer can have a crop hailed out while the parcel across the road gets only rain, if even that.

Boar wrangling

Yesterday Matt called and said, "You gotta blog this." A wild pig had showed up at his house. We went over and sure enough, here he was. Using boards to guide him, Matt, Carol, Jean and I wrangled him into a dog run (Matt and Carol have a kennel.) Matt's plans are to feed the pig and nurse him back to health before releasing him.

Beautiful Sunset Last Night

Last night was a really nice sunset. In addition here are a few new blossoms from the front yard.

Here's the white iris with just a hint of lavender . . .

and it's yellow cousin . . .

And the newest rose.

Fried chicken and cream gravy:
When I was in high school, my best buddy was Robert Pyle and his mother made the best cream gravy you ever tasted. Not long ago I googled Robert and knew it was him the moment I saw the name of his website: creamgravy.com.

This got me to realize that I had never learned to cook fried chicken and cream gravy, even though cream gravy over rice is one of my favorite foods in the world (actually because of Robert's mom). Well I broke out an old WWII Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (it actually has a section on how to substitute for rationed items) and pulled up recipes for pan fried chicken and for cream gravy.

I have been having a ball with it and have cooked it three times since.

Prairie Home Companion Joke Show

It's the weekend of the annual joke show and here are the best:

“Knock, knock” “Who's there?” “Control freak - ok now you say control freak who?”

Martha Stewart has announced major policy changes and henceforth in all of her soups after boiling, she will no longer dump the stock.
Also from now on all of her recipes will serve six to eight.

They've been prepping Kobe Bryant for court. While working on his vocabulary, they discovered that he thought harass was two words.

What does Michael Jackson like about twenty-eight year olds?
The fact that there are 20 of them.

If Michael Jackson is charged with molesting one more child, he gets his own parish.

Why do Episcopalians always lose at chess?
They can’t tell the difference between a bishop and a queen?

The reason America is running low on oil is most of our oil is Alaska while most of the dipsticks are in Washington.

America is a land of opportunity where even the president of the United States can dream of one day being elected president of the United States.

Loudspeaker voice: “Boat #99 you have to return to the dock or we will have to charge you for overtime.”
Boss, we only have 75 boats.
Loudspeaker voice: “Boat #66, are you in trouble?”

Cannibals went to the wedding because they were told the guests would toast the bride and groom.

What is the difference between boogers and broccoli?
Kids won’t eat broccoli.

Quintuplets fly free under the frequent flyer program.

What is large, gray and doesn’t matter? Irrelephant.

Man who wrote the hokey pokey died at the age of 93. Everything went well until it was time to put him in his coffin. When they put the left leg in . . .

Shouted: “Hey, how do I get to the other side of the lake?”
Shouted back: “You are on the other side of the lake.”

I notice you have a stepladder.
Yes, I never knew my real ladder.

What is 40 ft long and smells like urine?
Line dancing at the nursing home.

Boss asked, “Who says that just because we sex at the office party, you don’t have to work hard around here?”
“My lawyer does," she replied.

Because of the recent unrest, they are closing all of the KMarts in Iraq and are replacing them with targets.

What’s the quickest way to get to Dublin?
Are you walking or driving?
Driving.
That’s the quickest way.

How does the blind parachutist know when he is close to the ground?
The leash goes slack.

How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris?
We don’t know. They’ve never tried.

The pentagon knows that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
They kept the receipts.

I’m afraid your uncle’s brain is dead but his heart is still beating. -
Oh dear, we’ve never had a liberal in the family before.

They think they will soon find Osama bin Laden.
The have found a place where you can buy your way in and no one can tell if you were there.
It’s the Texas National Guard.

Man goes into a bar in Montana and yells, “Every last Democrat is a horse’s ass,” whereupon everyone in the bar turns on him and beats him up.
After he gets out of the hospital he goes back to the same bar and shouts “Every last Republican is a horse’s ass,” whereupon everyone in the bar turns on him and beats him up.
As he’s being wheeled to the ambulance he asks, “Who are these people, anyway.” The driver says, “You don’t understand sir, this is horse country.”

There is a new bumper sticker that says “Run, Hillary Run!” Democrats are putting them on the back bumper and Republicans are putting them on the front bumper.

What do you call 50,000 geeks playing monopoly? - Microsoft.

Why are married women heavier than single women?
Single women come home, see what’s in the fridge and go to bed.
Married women come home, see what’s in bed and go to the fridge.

Woman was heard praying, “Dear lord give me wisdom to understand my man, love to forgive him and patience to understand him, because Lord if I pray for strength, I’ll just kill him.”

Some women want one man to satisfy their every need while some men want every woman to satisfy their one need.

What is the difference between a dog and a fox? About eight beers.

How do you force Unitarians to leave town?
Burn a question mark in their front yard.

Load too big? Use a roof rack.

Had to deliver a mower that was too big for the trunk of the Taurus so Kirk's bug came to the rescue.

Jean's new rose is a "First Prize." She wasn't going plant this variety until next year but this one was just too grand to pass up.

And here is the latest update on the unfolding kwanzan cherry tree.

We spent this evening watching a video of "Enchanted April." If you have not seen this delightful film it is one of our favorites.

Weather station online

If you look over at the left side of this page under links, you will see "Our Weather Station" which links to a web page showing the weather at our house.

I have had the weather station sitting in its box in my closet since my days at Radio Shack. It was a major production to install it and I just had never gotten around to it. But since we moved to Lubbock it looked more and more desireable. The main impetus to getting it installed was Jean's desire to know how much it rained at our house. Because rain here frequently comes from storm cells moving through, it is possible for rain from a storm at our house to vary by over an inch from what is reported at the airport or across town. The only way to really tell is a rain guage and lots of people have them sitting on their fence posts.

But the weather station would bring real-time results right into the house, so I dragged the box out of the closet and put it up. I could read the temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and the wind's speed and direction on the little box. I had to push a button to cyle through from one function to another but if I hooked it up to the computer then I could not only see everything that is going on at once, I could see it graphed over time.

The software said that it could be posted to the net so Kirk tinkered around with it and now you can ask me "How's the weather?" or you can click our weather link.

Today was a good day

Jean and I listened to about an hour and a half of the Deepak Chopra “Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire” audiobook over three sessions. We went out and got her a rose and a plum tree, along with a milk and coffee run. We went by a beading store called Friendze which I found on the net and, though it didn’t have the brass chain I was looking for to repair my pendulum, Jean did find great colored reading glasses for $4.98. In addition they have great semi-precious beads and will inexpensively re-string her broken necklace.

After coming home and planting the rose and the plum we cooked buffalo burgers on the grill. I had never had buffalo before, it was tasty. We are working on eating more healthy meals. We are getting away from animal products that contain hormones and antibiotics. Our milk is now Organic Valley and our meat and chicken is organic, range fed and hormone free. Its more expensive and harder to find but worth the trouble. Check out the Meatrix for info on what factory farms are selling as meat and poultry. (Thanks accordionguy for the link.)

This evening we watched the dvd of Chocolat which came today from netflix. I'm surprised we hadn't gotten around to seeing it before. It was delightful.
As I said, all in all a good day.

By the way, just a note for those of your who remember Jean's interest in rainfall: Before we came here Lubbock had been in a severe drought. Average rainfall was a little over 18 inches and last year they had 7-1/4. We came on January 14 and it had not rained since August. It rained on January 15 and as of today the year to date rainfall is 10.27 inches.

PS. Rain is forecast for the next three days.

Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire

Last night I started Deepak Chopra's book "The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence." It looks to be a very well done work. With his scientific/medical background, I am pleased with his integration of science and new physics into a metaphysical and spiritual framework.

So far in the book he speaks of the universe as being comprised of energy and information. Incredibly over-simplified he says, energy comprises everything and information defines and structures it. He is making a good case.

Further reports to follow as the book unfolds.

Cherry Blossum Update

The Kwanzan cherry trees are filling out nicely.

Time Warp Traffic Jam

Just down the street, these trucks were parked on the street just before dark last night. At 9:30 this morning, two tow-trucks showed up to transport them away.