It’s springtime and love is in the air. Also mosquitos, but that’s not what we’re talking about today. What we are talking about is the appearance of babies of various non-human species. We’ve been monitoring the progress of the red-shouldered hawk nestling that’s in a live oak tree down the street from our house. I… Continue reading Checking in on the [wildlife] youngsters
COVID Cooking: Chile Rellenos
So, I was doing some spring cleaning, hosing down the Gazette archives, when I ran across some articles that I never got around to publishing, due to my incredibly busy regimen of being retired. And I realized that the Gazette’s Food & Drink category was more lacking in nutrients than a Fletcher’s corn dog at… Continue reading COVID Cooking: Chile Rellenos
Random Thursday
Don’t try this at home…or anywhere, actually. Happy Thursday! Today, as you well know, is National Grape Popsicle Day. There are many fine ways to celebrate the day, one of which is to use a grape popsicle to keep your drink cold, as long as it’s not chardonnay. Today, for your reading pleasure, we shall… Continue reading Random Thursday
Random Thursday
Note: This is an abbreviated edition of RT because alert Gazette readers deserve a break. Today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal has a report about the significant increase in cheating in schools and colleges as a result of…well…many things, including the pandemic-induced shift to online classes. I was struck by the lengths that some… Continue reading Random Thursday
Random Thursday: The Weekend Edition
Look what I found in my Office Drawer of Miscellaneous Stuff: State-of-the-art gaming equipment circa 1977 More than four decades ago, this electronic football game was a huge win for Mattel, at one point selling more than 500,000 units per week. The little red blips on the screen represent the ball carrier (the brightest light)… Continue reading Random Thursday: The Weekend Edition
Random Thursday: The *gasp* Thursday Edition
My Oura ring provided me with the following bit of information this morning: Well. Of course, my biggest creative challenge on any given day is deciding which white socks to wear, so I wasn’t sure what to do with this advice. Then it came to me, sudden-like: “it’s Thursday. I should craft a Random Thursday… Continue reading Random Thursday: The *gasp* Thursday Edition
My Dad’s Collection: Glass Insulators
Warning (Nerd Alert): This post careens pretty far into the weeds on a rather obscure topic. Perhaps its saving grace is some pretty pictures. My dad was a dedicated collector of…everything. He had copious quantities of stamps (we’re talking thousands) and coins (a hernia-inducing amount, to be exact). He, along with my mom, “invested” in… Continue reading My Dad’s Collection: Glass Insulators
As The Worm Dangles
Imagine, if you will, a pair of drunken-yet-paradoxically-overcaffeinated zombies staggering along a tree-lined cart path on a golf course. That mental picture is not far from the reality of my and Debbie’s morning runs lately. You see, we are well into the Season of Dangling Worms here in the Texas Hill Country, and the act… Continue reading As The Worm Dangles
Loquat to No-quat
Debbie and I have spent the past few weeks repairing the landscape around our house following the devastation of the Great Texas Freeze-Out of 2021. We make a great team; she tells me what to do, and I do it. So far, we’ve taken out the following dead, or mostly dead, plants: 4 pittosporum 4… Continue reading Loquat to No-quat
When Birds Attack
Let me dissuade you from making the obvious assumption about the title of this post: it’s not about Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. It’s actually much scarier. We were finishing supper yesterday evening when I heard a *thump* and out of the corner of my eye saw not one but two birds fluttering next to one… Continue reading When Birds Attack