Howdy, folks! Yesterday was Pi Day, which is kind of fun (unless you’re math phobic), but not as fun as its tastier sibling, Pie Day. We ignored the former but celebrated the latter thanks to dear friends Audrey and Mike who delivered a cherry pie from the Bluebonnet Cafe in Marble Falls. Forget beer; cherry pie is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy!
We’ve got a lot to cover, none of which is as important as cherry pie, but that’s never stopped me before, so hang on.
A Tale of Two Years
What a difference a year makes when a serious drought strikes. A photo popped up in my Facebook memories from this date in 2024, and it provided a sad contrast to the current conditions today.
You can drag the yellow slider to the left to see last year’s landscape outside our neighborhood and how the same scene looks today. (I couldn’t match the scenes precisely but they’re close enough to give you the sad overall picture.)
We’ve had less than 5″ of rain since last October 1st. It would normally be at least three times that much, although I no longer know what normal really is.
A Tale of Two Dogs
We dog sat (that’s a word, right?) a German Shepherd named Sophie for a week, along with her little brother, Clifford, a Welsh Corgi. Dogs are people, too, and that being the case, they also weren’t completely on board with Daylight Savings Time. That may explain this weird showdown that occurred on our bedroom floor early one morning.
Feel free to leave a comment if you and your significant other recently engaged in similar behavior.
A Tale of Two TV Sitcoms
[I’m really stretching the heading thing. Sorry about that.]
Debbie and I have been watching (and rewatching) two older sitcoms: Kim’s Convenience (2016-2021; now streaming on Netflix) and Better Off Ted (2009-2010; now streaming on Amazon Prime). We’ve found both to be hilarious in their own unique ways, and both deserved longer runs than they had. I’m not going to try to review them here due, but if you’re looking for lighthearted fare, you could do worse than these two.
The reason I mention them is because I ran across a very helpful website called TV Tropes (The All Devouring Pop-Culture Wiki). If you find a TV program that you want to know more about — from, say, The Dick Van Dyke Show to Firefly to Abbott Elementary — this should be your first stop.
Because it’s a wiki, TV Tropes is built and updated by fans, many (most? all?) of which are borderline obsessed with the subject matter, and who provide an seemingly infinite number of details about the characters and plots of each program. It has a very helpful search capability, and you have the option of turning off spoilers if you don’t really want to know everything.
A Tale of…well, I got nothin’ now…
I did not get up at 2:30 a.m. Thursday night to view the lunar eclipse (aka the “Blood Moon”), but I did take a photo of the moon in its waxing gibbous phase on February 8th. To be honest, I didn’t know what phase it was in, so I found the preceding link that answered the question. If you’re reading this on a computer, right-click to see a larger image. I’m really happy with my new 2x teleconverter, coupled with an 80-200 zoom for my DSLR. I’d never before been able to capture the details of the moon’s craters so clearly.
An Unusual (for us) Turtle Encounter
Debbie and I were in our golf cart early this morning, heading for a pickleball match with neighbors, when we spotted this in the middle of the creek crossing.
This is a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), although in our experience they’re not common at all. In fact, this is the first sighting we’ve seen in our ten years in the Texas Hill Country. (Interestingly, we encountered one in our neighborhood in Midland; it was obviously released by someone who brought it in from a different part of the state.)
We come across a lot of turtles in this section of the road, and we’ll normally just pick them up and move them to the side of the road where they were headed, or put them in the creek. But I was leery of trying to pick up this critter, so I got a stick to urge it to move off the road from a safe distance. It was a wise move; other species are quite cooperative and want nothing more than to get away. This one proved to be combative in the extreme; watch how that played out (Debbie was the videographer):
I muted the yelps of fear. I also edited out the end of the encounter where I flipped the turtle down the embankment and it landed ungracefully on its back, forcing me to climb down and flip it over and into the water. I’m pretty sure it did not express any form of gratitude for my daring “rescue.”
Parting Shot
I hope today you find a way to live your best life, like this turkey vulture, perched on a flood control drain, is doing:
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