Thanks

Happy belated Thanksgiving to all. I am always thankful for the great family and friends I have. And I had a chance to spend some time with many of them these past few days.

Thanksgiving brunch started at 11:AM at the Woodlands country club, which meant leaving the house at 9:45AM. We arrived a bit early, so we took a few pics with the Zappas while waiting for Lina and Joe to arrive:





Lunch was nice and extensive. I have a hard time saying no to desserts, especially when they're on fire:


Afterward, we were gifted with many of Mrs. Zappa's homemade lemon cookies, mini pumpkin cheesecakes, and biscottis:


Later that afternoon, I stopped by June's place to see how her dinner preparations were coming along. In case you were wondering, yes, she really does live in a five story townhome:


June cooks once a year - Thanksgiving - and she goes all out. I believe in addition to the turkey, she was making focaccia bread, salmon mousse, potatoes and misc other side dishes:


Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay for dinner, but I was there just long enough for one of her two skittish cats to make an appearance. I fed this one treats for a little while before she ran off:


My folks also had turkey and ham waiting at home. After a quick bite, I picked up Jeremy and met Ron at Champps sports bar to watch the UT / A&M game. As in years past, Jeremy and I like to place a friendly wager on the game - the loser picking up the winner's dinner tab. As expected, UT lost again. Jeremy - hope you enjoyed your apple crisp a-la-mode.

And as a departing pic, I've been walking Mylo a bit of late while his owner recovers from surgery. That's one happy dog:

Reunion

Ron made a quick visit to Austin this weekend. It gave him a chance to catch up with some friends he wouldn't normally get to see. Unfortunately, it also meant I missed the friend's pot luck I was invited to - my apologies, Dustin and EmSue.

Saturday, I got a chance to run the 10 Mile loop around Town Lake before Ron arrived. That night we had dinner and drinks with Kate before going bowling. Ron managed to charm the co-ed waitresses at Maudie's, but it was talking his way into free games with the male attendant at Dart Bowl that was really impressive.


Sunday morning, Ron, Pete and I rode the Spicewood Springs loop in the morning. It was overcast, humid, and windy. Very windy. Painfully windy. But we survived.


Afterward, Pete went home to brew and try out his new smoker, while Ron and I met up with AJ for burgers and a quick home tour.


It was good seeing these 2 together again. I don't think they've seen each other in 10 or 15 years.

November fortunes

Looks like it's going to be an interesting month. Is it a coincidence Ron is coming up from Houston tomorrow?

Mom's day

This weekend was my mom's birthday. Being the extraordinary son that I am, I made the short trek to Houston to help her celebrate. As customary, there was a lot of feasting, highlighted by Benihana's:


And McCormick & Schmick's:


While home, I also had a chance to pick some fruit from the family orange trees - although they look more like bushes, because the branches hang so low from the weight of the oranges. They (the oranges) have a lot of seeds, but they are very sweet:


This weekend was also Jeremy's b-day. Happy birthday!

Mylo

Maurie's out of town, so she asked if I could dog sit (in situ) a few days. Sure, why not? My family was visiting this weekend, so I gave them the run of my house while I took up shop at Mylo's.

Gave me a chance to recover from my bug and teach Mylo a few tricks.


Being food motivated, snatching popcorn in mid-air was easy.



Getting him to play fetch was a little harder. He's easily distracted - between his ball and his bone. Frequently, he tries to get both, but balancing on 2 legs while trying to grab another item with his remaining third is a bit tricky.



Btw, I saw Last Train Home and The Switch this weekend. Last Train Home is a pretty incredible documentary - I highly recommend it. The Switch - well, let's just say it's a lot better than The Back-up Plan. Actually, it was mildly entertaining. But go see Last Train Home (it's at the Regal Arbor) - I can't say enough good things about it. You won't regret it.

Carne mechada

"Hammered meat." That's what I feel like right now. I've been coughing non-stop for 48 hours. It's a dry cough that sounds horrible, and each one feels like I'm doing a stomach crunch. I am so sore. If I conservatively count 6 coughs a minute (that's a cough every 10 seconds), in the past 48 hours I've coughed 17,280 times. At this rate, I'm going to have six-pack abs by Sunday.


At least I might be able to get some sleep tonight. I've had this buzzing in the upstairs bedroom wall for months. A pest service came out to poke holes in the wall thinking the culprits might be bees or wasps. They didn't find anything, and I was left with a bunch of holes I still haven't patched. The buzzing is quite annoying - it's random, and not predictable - I liken it to water torture stories I've read about.


My workaround for this situation was to sleep downstairs in my guest bedroom. That worked fine until this week when my brother came to stay with me for a while. So back to the upstairs bedroom I went. I think I got about 3 hours of sleep the first night. The second night I started banging harder on the walls, thinking if there were insects in the walls, they would be annoyed by my pounding. All my pounding did nothing for the buzzing and just made my hand sore. Next, I opened the window to try banging from the outside. While beating on my outside siding, I happened to brush against a telephone line running from the telephone pole in front to an anchor point near where I suspected the buzzing to be.


Turns out the telephone line was vibrating. When I grabbed the line, I dampened the vibrations and the buzzing went away. Let go and the buzzing returned. And the wall anchor made things worse because it turned my wall into an amplifier - like when you were a kid and used 2 cups and string to simulate a telephone. Anyway, I called AT&T and had them remove the old line today. The buzzing is gone. Silence has been restored. And there was much rejoicing.