What we thought was an ice storm was just a mild precursor to what happened overnight, as we awakened to a quarter-inch coating on, well, everything. There’s a certain amount of beauty in such events – not enough to make us wish for more of them, of course – as ordinary things are transformed into… Continue reading Cold Snap
Category: Midland/Odessa
Stalking the wily Punica granatum
We’re a little late for Rosh Hashanah, but we harvested the first pomegranate this morning. We may still be a bit early for optimum ripeness; we never know for sure until we break one apart and try it out, but most conventional wisdom says to wait until October to harvest them. The seed pulp on… Continue reading Stalking the wily Punica granatum
Aliens among us seeking steel-belted radials
Or maybe they’re just humans from an alternate, rubber-worshipping universe, or visitors from an algoresque future without tyres. Who knows? But whatever their origins, while we can’t necessarily judge their motives for needing the wheels on one of our company trucks residing in our company parking lot, we are left with one niggling question: wasn’t… Continue reading Aliens among us seeking steel-belted radials
Chicago: 40 Years Later
On Tuesday night we went to the Chicago concert at the WinPAC, along with however many other people it takes to fill that venue (oh, it’s 1,827 folks, according to the technical specs). The show was announced as a sellout and while I did see a few scattered empty seats, I’m sure it was due… Continue reading Chicago: 40 Years Later
Barn Swallow Feeding Video
The photos I posted of the barn swallow family got enough positive reaction that I decided to get some video of the parents taking care of the young’uns. Following is a five-minute video distilled from about a 45 minutes of raw footage. I’ve edited it to focus on the interactions between the adults and the… Continue reading Barn Swallow Feeding Video
More Nest Peeping: Barn Swallows
As I mentioned a couple of months ago, we decided to let the barn swallows finish building a nest on our front porch, mainly because they picked an innocuous spot and I figured if I ran them off, they’d just find a worse place while we were out of town. The clutch of eggs in… Continue reading More Nest Peeping: Barn Swallows
Bunny Stop
Baby cottontails are perhaps the cutest wild animals in existence, especially when they try to hide in plain sight. This one inexplicably stopped just short of a bridge that would have completely hidden it. Perhaps it thought that we’d be confused by the rebar right behind it, thinking it was a snake. In any event,… Continue reading Bunny Stop
The Midland County Courthouse and Illogical Architectural Sentimentality
The planned Energy Tower now has its own Wikipedia page, so it will inevitably be built, because they can’t put anything in Wikipedia that’s misleading, right? That means that a large number (or small number or a handful or one-or-two) Midlanders will be inconsolable over the demolition of the now-vacant county courthouse occupying a full… Continue reading The Midland County Courthouse and Illogical Architectural Sentimentality
Birding from the comfort of home
The wreath hanging on our front door isn’t really a Christmas wreath. Well, it did start out that way, but when Debbie was unable to find a spring wreath she liked, she hung a few spring-y accessories on it and decided to leave it up for a while. But I suspect a few people in… Continue reading Birding from the comfort of home
Midland Airpark Relocation: Threatening the sacred cow
In which we contemplate the butchering of a sacred cow.