This is a scene from the four foot obelisk in our back yard, illuminated by the morning sun:
What the hell is going on here?
And before you ask, it came with the house.
Our friend Phil is visiting for the weekend as a stop on his tour of the American West. Next stop will be a tent in Utah, apparently.
We drove up to Scottsdale to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's compound, Taliesin West [Flickr].
Unlike Fallingwater, they allow photography there. How 'bout that?
So the wife had the 'big' ultrasound on Monday. You know, the one where they zoom in on your unborn child's junk in an effort to determine the gender. Assuming they're not "hiding" it, as one nurse said they do sometimes.
Well, it looks like we'll be having a son. Or a three legged daughter. The former, I'd imagine, would get picked on a lot less on the playground, so we're hoping that's how it's worked out.
I'm not going to post the picture from the sonogram, with the arrow and "IT"S A BOY!!!!!!!" that the tech wrote on the image pointing to the twig & berries, as I've sworn not to post any too many embarrassing pictures on the internets, especially involving nudity or genitalia, even computerized renderings of reflected sound.
Eventually, the kid (or worse, his friends) will find the Wayback Machine, and then I'd be in trouble. After all, he'll know where I sleep.
Anyway, the discovery that we're having a boy was a great relief. This means that when the time comes in 15 or so (yes, I'm probably being grossly optimistic) years to have "the talk", I can say: "Son, have fun, just be sure to bag it up" instead of "honey, if he touches you, I'll fucking kill him, and send you to a convent".
Today Betsy and I:
We managed all of this between 9:30 am and 4:30 pm, and everyone we dealt with was friendly, helpful and courteous.
Clearly we're not in the South anymore, Toto.
We made it. That's about all I got.
Day two concludes in Amarillo, in the great state of Texas. We travelled from Little Rock, making it the shortest of our three days on the road. The weather through Arkansas and the better part (is there such a thing?) of Oklahoma! was torrential downpours separated by periods of blinding rain blowing sideways. We decided the most scenic thing on the drive today was the windmill farms by the side of the interstate in OK, and the fancy rest stops near the TX border.
Amarillo is the last decent sized town before you hit Albuquerque, New Mexico, which had been our original goal for today's drive. Unfortunately, the wind and rain took its toll on my driving endurance, and we decided not to push on for the remaining 298 miles through the Texas wastelands.
So we sit tonight in the finest hotel in Amarillo. No, really. The Holiday Inn Express is literally spitting distance from the fractured tarmac of I-40, but it's brand new, and pretty swank for $118/night. The room is almost the size of our condo, with a fridge and microwave, and swanky granite all over the bathroom.
Mooooo: They come for the giant cow. They stay for the bosomy waitstaff.
When I inquired at the front desk for places to eat, there was only one response: The Big Texan. Why only one answer? Because unless you want fast food, that's about all Amarillo has to offer.
But hey, The Big Texan has free limo service to and from all the I-40 motels, and is near a hog farm and a classy strip joint (looking for the words Girls! Girls! Girls! on the marquee is the best way to separate the wheat from the chaff of titty bars). It can't be half bad, right?
I'm not happy: Betsy thinks smokers should stop polluting her air.
Betsy was appalled that the great state of Texas still allows people to smoke indoors, and that we were required to walk through the smoking "section" (i.e. 3/4 of the room) to get to the non-smoking "section".
The dining room was an attempt at an 1800's saloon, basically a big room with a balcony level surrounding it. The centerpiece is an elevated table under bright lights, with a clock at the head. This is the table you're served at when you order The Texan's famous (in these parts, anyway) 72 oz. steak. If you eat it in under an hour, it's free. When we arrived, there was a dude making a go of it, who progressively began to look sicker and sicker as the meal progressed. He ultimately failed, and packed a doggy bag in shame. But people, this is 4 1/2 pounds of meat we're talking about here! You can even watch the spectacle unfold live on their web cam.
The waitstaff dress in cowboys and indians attire. Our waitress "Brittany" was dressed as indian princess Poke-her-hot-ass Pocahontas.
Service was on the slow side, but the food was decent. As I told the wife, I've paid more for a worse steak.
So if you're in Amarillo, you might as well stop in and enjoy all that The Big Texan has to offer, because really, where else are you going to eat in this shit-hole town?
Unrelated side note: iTunes users- you know that "sharing" setting in the preferences panel? Before you turn it on, you should consider that you'll be sharing your library of music and videos with everyone on your local network. Including your fetish porn:
Filth! Absolute Filth!: UJWILES likes to share.
We just wrapped up our first day of our cross-country journey to begin the next phase of our lives in Tempe, AZ, unfortunately without our favorite traveling companion. It was a long slog, but we made good time.
The first leg was by far the worst, through the monotonous interstates of central Georgia, a desolate wasteland punctuated only by garish billboards hawking discount divorces, discount liquor and handjob joints (probably not in that order), from Statesboro to Atlanta.
Alabama was more scenic, especially the Nascar temple at Talladega and the national forest named after this hallowed ground consecrated with the sacrament of the south - Miller High Life.
I don't have much positive to say about Mississippi - the quality of their interstates rivals the quality of their public education system, I suspect, and the best part about leaving this stretch of the trip was being finished with it. I believe it was in MS that we ate at the world's creepiest McDonalds, which I described as such because of the massive Ronald McDonald torso sprouting from the facade, giving it's best Third-Reich salute.
Heil Ronald!: This creeped me out enormously.
Tennessee wasn't bad, though I prefer the trip up I-75 (or is it 26?) towards Knoxville to the flat stretch that terminates at Memphis. From the bridge crossing the Mississippi you can almost see the river itself. Imagine that.
I type this from a hotel in North Little Rock, Arkansas. I'm pushing myself a little to drive a bit longer on the first two days instead of diving the driving equally, in order to give us enough to spare on a side trip to the Grand Canyon when we reach Flagstaff, AZ.
I suspect that trip may consist of the two of us stepping from the car, gazing out over the majestic expanse, then getting back in the car and heading back to the road. We'll see.
Well, phase I of our move out west is now complete. We're no longer the owners of our lovely house on Taylor Street. It now belongs to one of the founders of this site. We're a little sad to see it go, but glad everything went relatively smoothly with the sale.
The actual act of moving, however, was a bit more complicated.
First, the movers didn't show up as scheduled on Wednesday to pack our stuff. When I called the company's coordinator at 10 AM (they were supposed to be there at 9) her response was "They're not there?" Uh oh. They eventually called back and said they were going to pack all in one day.
Thursday arrives, and with it, a huge semi, an old dude driving, and a couple of guys to pack and load all our stuff. Luckily, we don't have much.
Of course one of our SCADdie loser neighbors in the rental house a few doors down didn't pay attention to my polite sign asking that the spaces in front of our house be vacated by 8:30 for the truck to park. So we had to park next to her, with most of the truck in the street (facing the wrong way on 1-way street, so the access doors could be opened on the left side of the van). We left ample clearance to the left of the truck, enough for even garbage trucks to barrel past.
A napoleonic officer with the SCMPD viewed all this as an opportunity to assert his authority over us, and demanded that the driver move the truck (that wasn't blocking traffic), saying we should park in the lane "where deliveries are supposed to be made". Never-mind the fact that there's no way to maneuver a 75 foot moving van down the narrow lane, and doing so would block the trash collection as well as trap several people in their homes.
I ended up making some calls to the Savannah "Traffic Engineering" department, and got a permit fast-tracked by using some of Betsy's connections to people in high places. Turned out it wasn't needed, because the cop never came back (found some bigger fish to harass, perhaps), and we were done loading by the time they called me back anyway.
In the end, almost everything got packed and loaded, and is now on its way out west. Everything else went in the trash:
Deep political commentary
Schlepping the dozen or so boxes of books, papers and sporting equipment from our storage unit back to the house reminded me how much I hate moving shit around, after doing it at least 7 times over the last 8 years (mostly the wife's crap).
I've therefore decided it'll be worth every penny of the exorbitant fee the movers are going to charge to pack, load, ship, store and and unload our stuff.
I also found out it's unwise to not wear a dust mask while sanding rust off of a bed frame that has been sitting outside for the last two years. Better yet, don't leave an expensive bed frame out side for two years in the first place like some sort of web-footed moron.
Great tits enjoying the warmer weather so far
The wild bird has shown great flexibility to adjust breeding patterns to match higher temperatures in the UK, but more warming could start to kill it off
[New Scientist - Latest Headlines]
