Bottlecaps

Foto Thursday

At the farm on Sunday morning, I found a photographic opportunity …

A wasp was building a nest under the glass table on the porch.

But this wasn't as close as I got.

Kinda weird, eh?

Sadly the wasp's head is not in focus on this one because ... it is closer to me. In a very high-pitched whine, I could hear him ... "hey! what the fuck do you think you're doing? you're supposed to be scared of me!"

No, I didn't get stung.

Have a happy Thursday, everybody.

Foto Wednesday

A few more photos today. (Don't worry, grandparents, there'll be more pictures of the grandkids on Friday. I'm holding out on the best ones until the end of the week.)

Amber waves of grain, South Texas style.

No bluebonnets this year. So far.

But the cactus flowers were out in force.

I'm gonna keep taking this picture until the old house falls down.

This old house. Emphasis on the "old." Not so much on the "house."

The wood inside the house is very nice. Damn shame it's beyond repair now.

Light fixtures are totally overrated.

I just liked the colors when I took the photo. Then Shannon said these old caulk guns looked like ducks. And … they sort of do.

Happy Texas Independence Day

Today is our terquasquicentennial, but I wouldn't recommend walking into the nearest honky-tonk and telling everyone "hey, have a great terquasquicentennial!"

Plenty has happened at the Bottlecaps household in the past few weeks: The older boy got a very short haircut (pictures to come on Friday, I hope). The younger boy has begun to reach for his bottle and try to hoist it to his mouth. But we'll carry on about the kids later.

Today in 1836, Texas signed its declaration of independence. And yet, probably because the label was designed by Yankees who don't know better, Lone Star beer still features a "Since 1845" on its label. Texas did become a state in 1845, but we were Texas a decade before that. And the beer? It showed up almost a hundred years later.

Some time ago, I wrote a letter to Lone Star, and was ignored. What do you think? Should I hassle them some more?

After all, I've consumed plenty of Lone Star in the past month during my honky-tonk tour of Austin. The enormous story, in which I review some of Austin's joints based on their Texan-ness, is scheduled to run this Sunday, and yet nobody has asked me to help cut a word and I've gotten nary a word of feedback.

I wrote the opening to the story about a year ago when I got the idea, have been working on it on and off since November, I'm pretty much at the point where I don't know if it's good or if it's terrible.

Assuming all goes well, I will post a link to the story next week.

In the past month I made my second trip to Kreuz Market, though I don't recall the first. I've also been to the Salt Lick and to Cooper's in New Braunfels. Don't have anything to say about them, in particular, I'm just bragging.

Was thumbing through an old Texas Monthly the other day and ran across a story about photographer Keith Carter, who not only taught a freshman photography course at Lamar University in Beaumont, but was so impressive in a lecture that I happened to see, that I actually enrolled in Lamar to take the class.

(Of course, the 8 a.m. class was difficult for a 28-year-old copy editor who worked until midnight and liked to drink beer into the wee hours. Ultimately, I dropped out and got an "F." But for the half-semester that I attended, I learned a lot.)

(Another problem, of course, was that photography was expensive in the pre-digital age. I had a good camera from my dad, but I was constantly buying film and photo paper and darkroom supplies and that cut heavily into the alms I received from the Enterprise.)

Anyway, in this Texas Monthly article,' Keith Carter managed to drive home another lesson. The writer was talking about how Carter, as an artist, needed to have a sense of place. Suddenly, he no longer needed to go to NYC or Paris or L.A. to be an artist, he could do that right there in Southeast Texas.

Once he felt the kinship with his surroundings, he was able to flourish (I know, a decidedly non-Texan word to use, but my coffee has grown cold and I don't have another word handy).

I've been thinking about that recently, as I've been visiting the joints in Austin that should feel the most like home to me. But Austin, with its growth/hip/ wealthy/tech complex, seems to have left me behind. It's weird to think that for as hard as I worked to get here, I arrived to find out it wasn't what it used to be.

Of course, the real question is, was it ever?

I'm not going anywhere of course. I have a good job and a mortgage and a wonderful network of professionals we do business with, from preschools to dentists.

And I'm not saying that if I went back to San Angelo that I would be an artist or even more sucessful than I am now.

But I do miss my sense of place.

Maybe I can go visit this summer for a weekend.

Mid-February update

So the gate has been 75% repaired, the alarm system is installed and working and the temperatures have returned to normal Texas weather.

The boys are fine, nobody is sick, my story that I've been working on is about 75% done.

Shit, I guess it's time to return to the house-cleaning, exercising, dieting motivated guy i was in January before things went tits up around here.

Look for a link to that story in about three weeks. Other than that, there's no real point to this blog, other than Shannon got tired of looking at the last one …

Happy 2011

Both boys went to Mornings with the Messiah this morning, giving me time to exercise (New Year's resolution) and time to download photos for the first time.

More photos coming Friday, but for now …

We are really excited about 2011.

 

Catching up

As I'm typing this, the younger boy is working on 11 hours of sleep. While 10 hours of sleep was welcome, this is starting to become disturbing. (Yes. I checked. Every 15 minutes for the last 3 hours.)

Surely, he will wake as I type this rare blog. (He did, not five minutes after I typed that sentence. And stop calling me Shirley.)

So the younger boy is large and healthy and a good sleeper, meaning we have been blessed with two such children, meaning — it must be so — that we will pay for our sins in some other way down the line.

Let's catch up on other stuff.

For the older boy, we left AISD behind and never looked back. Based simply on the progress of his speech and the disappearance of at least half the tantrums, we made the right choice. He still will refuse to speak at times, and still is delayed compared to his peers, but is making remarkable progress.

I have not kept up with charting the NFL season after watching the Cowboys go down in flames. As it turns out, the only one of my NFL predictions that came true was that it would be Dallas to inexplicably choke. I think NFL predictions will not become a Bottlecaps tradition.

I'm damn proud of the Aggies. They turned their season around after Sherman had the guts to go with a different QB and delivered some damn fine games. I would talk trash about them beating the Longhorns, but they're so bad, it'd hardly be satisfying. I'm not terribly excited about the Cotton Bowl, though. A&M is destined to lose. In the years since I graduated, A&M has lost every bowl game it played in except the galleryfurniture.com bowl. It hurt to type that.

Aside from raising two boys, making a mell of a hess out of the house and then cleaning it up again, there's been little action around here. Shannon is going back to work in a couple days, which will make December a pretty tough month, but I'm sure I'll get my feet under me soon enough. If I continue to get 7 hours of sleep a night, it will be hard to complain.

This has been a pretty boring blog, considering I haven't typed much in the last couple months.

How about a picture?

Driving the tractor at the Farm. One of the best things to ever happen to the boy.

Farm on the Fotos

(The title of this blog is the pre-coffee version of Fotos on the Farm)

We went to the Farm this past weekend and I got the photo bug. It happens to me from time to time.

I took about 150 photos, so we'll have plenty of pictures of the older boy this Friday (the younger one was sleeping most of the time).

In the meantime, here's a semi-Halloween mini-gallery of what I found …

Inside the old house, I found Jesus.
Looks like he's been right there for a hundred years.

Religous imagery is like shooting fish in a barrel,
but I was just getting warmed up.

By the dawn's early light.

Rats! He died before I could get him in focus.

I couldn't get the macro setting to focus on the bug's head.
But somehow that makes it more creepy.

Yeah, I kinda dig the Farm.

Miscellany Part IX

The older boy is going to go to his parochial preschool four mornings a week, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. After getting a look at AISD's PPCD program in action, and sitting in with the church preschool, it was an easy call to make.

For the record, at AISD, the boy's speech therapy comprised one 30-minute session a week, shared with 8 other children. The rest of the time, the teacher and assistant did the best they could, but mostly they herded higher-needs kids inside and outside, to the potty and back, from one end of the classroom to the other.

At Mornings with the Messiah, the boy plays with the other children, speaks to them, is more involved and there's more doing and learning and less standing around waiting for the other kids to participate / line up / stop crying / etc.

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Admiration / jealousy: Want to share two web sites with you that illustrate the gap between the creative ability I have and what I once would have aspired to.

The first: Garfield minus Garfield.

Some guy, reading the comics one day, decided that the Garfield strip without the fat cat was a very interesting place. Jon on his own is alternately manic, bizarre, psychotic, lonely, hallucinatory and depressed.

Alll the guy had to do was come up with the idea, and the rest kinda takes care of itself.

The second is Hyperbole and a Half.

Before you say, "Wait, those are crappy drawings," let me point out that it's the childish drawings that take the humor to the next level.

I'm particularly fond of this one.

I sit around these days and think what I could accomplish if I only had a little time. And then I look back at my 20s and I'm reminded that I had all the time in the world and all I accomplished was investing a whole lot of life into a copy desk in San Angelo that doesn't exist anymore and drinking in a lot of bars that either don't exist anymore or ain't what they used to be.

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Outrage: I can't believe AC/DC is letting Target use "For Those About to Rock" in its advertisements.

It is bad enough that music from one of Johnny Cash's songs — God's Gonna Cut You Down — is advertising Jeeps, but the Target ad uses a wide swath of the song, lyrics, too.

Nothing is sacred, I guess.

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Outrage II: If that Christine O'Donnell candidate had any shame, she would have quit the race over the First Amendment gaffe she made.

You can't run for political office at any level and not know that the first thing in the Bill of Rights calls for is separation of church and state. Later, of course, she would try to spin it, saying she meant only that those exact words don't appear, but her reaction at the time doesn't live up to that claim.

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Football: Having read ESPN's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column for several years now, I'm ahead of the curve on the issue of helmet-to-helmet hits and concussions.

As a football fan of more than 30 years, and as a traditionalist who is generally opposed to change, I have to say that I'm willing to see the game change to avoid another day like this past Sunday.

I don't approve of players using their helmets to target the heads of other players, I don't believe that's how the game should be played, I think hard hits can be delivered without the helmet.

Maybe it's because I'm losing some bloodlust in my old age. Maybe, well, there's little doubt my opinion is greatly influenced by the idea that my children might play football.

Accidents, injuries and tragedies will continue to happen in football without the helmet-to-helmet hits. Just ask Joe Theisman or Eric LeGrand. But the flurry of concussions we saw on Sunday isn't necessary.

I understand those who don't want the game to change. I understand those who say they they don't want to change the way they play. I understand the frustration, the "well, shit, let's just play two-hand touch" exaggerated exasperation.

I understand the hesitation of geeky sports journalists and fans to stand up and disagree with some of the biggest, toughest (and, in some cases, meanest) men on the planet who are arguing vociferously for the right to maim each other.

But it's necessary.

TMQ's Gregg Easterbrook reminds us from time to time: Football is king of our world. But there's no guarantee that will always be the case.

Slow morning / gutless governor

Still without the energy for a full-scale blog assault, but am enjoying a peaceful morning, so I thought I'd mention a few things.

The younger boy "slept through the night" if you count the fact that he refused to fall asleep until 12:30 p.m. and then slept until I had to get up at 7 a.m. to take the boy to school as "through the night." He did sleep a 7-hour stretch, so I guess that's pretty damn good.

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The older boy was sick yesterday with a mild stomach bug that made him pukey yesterday morning and Shannon and I a bit under the weather. The boy is recovered. He even went to school nicely this morning. Shannon is not doing as well.

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Bullworker was here last weekend and we made pretty good progress on clearing the backyard. Trying to make the backyard a safe place for the boy(s) to play, instead of mosquito landing strip / snake refuge.

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Been wanting to blog about this for awhile, and it doesn't look like I'll get to it, so about Rick Perry's refusal to debate Bill White: Pussy.

Seriously, the leader of our state will not debate his top challenger unless that top challenger makes an arbitrary concession (in this case, releasing some income tax information). Now, I know that Bill White has something to hide (he's a politician and a wealthy white, old guy and nobody in either category ever plays by the rules), but that's beside the point.

Perry has been the governor of Texas for 10 fucking years and he won't debate? Is that leadership? Is that being a Texan? He's not willing to stand up and defend his record? Shit, it should be required. I mean, really, it's embarassing. The gutlessness of it does not reflect well on Texas or on my alma mater.

By refusing to debate unless White makes this concession, it's basically saying: "I know I'd lose a debate, so if I'm going to do it, first you must give me this ammunition I can use against you."

Am I making myself clear? I mean, let's ignore the whole White / income tax thing for a minute. The Governor of Texas is not willing to stand up and defend his record against a challenger in a debate.

He can make excuses. He can pretend it's OK to demand concessions first. He can, and has, sidestep the whole thing and keep hammering at his opponent, but the fact remains:

The Governor of Texas is not willing to stand up and defend his record. Shameful.

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Sports question time!

Who's sick of Brett Favre? Is Gilbert Arenas mentally challenged? Are the Texas Rangers going to beat the Yankees and give me an almost-interest in the World Series?  Are the Cowboys fated to lose again this weekend? Who's happy after the Aggies play Mizzou? Me? Shannon?

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Seriously, if WIllie Nelson Picnic posters were meth, I'd be the toothless guy in the trailer home thinking the black helicopters were coming for him.

Time to gum some oatmeal. Will try to get some pictures up sometime tomorrow.

Developments

So much has changed since I last blogged. 

But enough about the Cowboys' collapse.

(Seriously, it's just as well that they suck. The pressure is off. Now I can just watch the games. Although after watching the Aggies and Dallas lose in Cowboys Stadium in less than 24 hours, I can't shake the feeling that there's some sort of curse there.)

The small boy is healthy and enthusiastically drinking milk as if his gullet was on fire. He slept last night for a seven-hour stretch. Not bad at all, considering he's six weeks old.

The larger-but-still-small boy is healthy and working hard on driving us all nutty. He has regressed in his potty training, is working on a Grade-A hunger strike, and is using his limited vocal skills to demand, demand, demand, demand, demand, with little interest in listening.

(But he's talking more. Today, as he was blubbering over my failure to follow his imaginary procedures regarding the stowage of crackers, he told me between tears to "have a good day at work" — mimicing Shannon's daily farewell.)

Shannon is doing well. I am nearly as good … just without much time to blog or exercise or sleep.

Maybe, we'll blog more soon.

(Thinking of giving up on scores of the week. Any protests?)