Life

Solar Highways

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Aunt-in-law sent me this video about Solar Highways.

I think that’s pretty cool, with a lot of potential. Not just that it provides us with a non-asphalt-based roadway solution, not that it provides a means to generate power, but the LED’s and what that can enable.

Of course, there appear to be lots of practical issues to have to work out, not just structural and environmental, but geez… that’s a lot of wire to have to lay down… do we have that amount of copper available? How about maintenance over 10-20-50 years?

Nevertheless, it seems to be some innovative thinking, and even if it doesn’t pan out, it’s great to see such ideas.

An old weekend

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Flipping channels on the TV and I see that VH-1 Classic is all heavy metal all weekend.

Rock on! \m/

And then… you realize, it’s VH-1… the “old people” music. And not just VH-1, but VH-1 Classic.

And it’s all old metal, which of course is cool in my book. I just watched a “Classic Albums” on Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” album. Awesome album.

Maybe it’s just amusing to watch the rebels of my rebellious youth becoming older. I mean, Jizzy Pearl’s recent rants on Metal Sludge sound like he needs to end them with “get off my lawn!”. When you see the guys in Slayer with their kids, or things like James Hetfield going to his daughter’s ballet class.

Yeah, we all get older. We’re just not as angry any more. Life changes, priorities change.

But in the end, well… Lemmy says it best: We are Motörhead, and we’re (still) gonna kick your ass. 🙂

Click if you Like hunting

/ hsoi

Looks like the man behind Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, only eats the meat he kills:

Mark Zuckerberg has begun slaughtering animals with his bare hands. The Facebook co-founder and chief executive recently vowed to only eat meat that comes from animals that he has killed himself, reports Forbes. The gruesome goal is the latest iteration of what the 27-year-old Internet billionaire calls his yearly “personal challenge” to better himself.

Seems like he gets stuff from local farms and processes them himself. Apparently he takes on these personal challenges as a way to have something else to do in life than running Facebook, and to try to better himself.

“I started thinking about this last year when I had a pig roast at my house,” he wrote. “A bunch of people told me that even though they loved eating pork, they really didn’t want to think about the fact that the pig used to be alive. That just seemed irresponsible to me. I don’t have an issue with anything people choose to eat, but I do think they should take responsibility and be thankful for what they eat rather than trying to ignore where it came from.”

Good for him. It seems both the people he runs with and the author of this article are way out of touch with reality, so it’s refreshing to see someone, especially someone in a role and position as Zuckerberg, to be willing to get a clue and not be so out of touch with reality.

Maintenance check

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Whatever it is you rely upon… when was the last time you did some basic maintenance on it?

I was doing some dry fire practice with my snub revolver and noticed the cylinder spin was sluggish. Gave her a little oil, checked screws for tightness, and all is good.

While the gas pump was filling up my car, I took a walk around the car and just gave it a look over. Do you normally just hop in your car? When was the last time you saw the right rear tire? Air pressure good? tread depth still deep enough? lights all still working? Pop the hood and check the fluid levels? air filter?

Your computer running well?

How about your own mind and body? Taken a step back to assess how you’re spending your time? If you’re eating right? Getting enough exercise? Spending enough time with family and friends? Doing what you love and what’s important, or at least ensuring balance in life?

How about just taking a little time off and doing nothing… just relax and unwind for a bit. Or, if you’ve doing a lot of that, getting out and doing something productive.

Just take a little check on the things you rely upon… be it a gun, a knife, a car, a computer, a friend, your own mind and body. Doesn’t have to be deep, just a little check now and again goes a long ways towards ensuring we don’t forget nor lose what’s important to us. 🙂

Tapioca Pudding

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Tapioca Pudding.

Some people love it. Some people hate it.

I love it.

But not just any tapioca pudding. It has to have large pearl tapioca in it. Why? Because it’s fun… or at least, as a kid I sure thought so. I still do.

When my paternal grandmother died a few days ago, I couldn’t help but think of tapioca pudding. She made it for us all the time. For whatever reason, she refused to use the small little “grains” even though she could conveniently buy them at the local grocery store. No… she would drive all the way to the PX to get the large pearl ones. Just for us (me and my sisters).

Any visit to Grandma’s house had this implication of tapioca pudding. We looked forward to it. Sometimes she didn’t have it; maybe a bread pudding or a rice pudding, which were good too, but they weren’t tapioca. It’s those big tapioca pearls in your mouth.. the way it feels.. it’s just fun. I think that’s why Grandma made it for us — the fun.

So when Grandma died, I went online and found a place that sells large pearl tapioca. I ordered some for each of my sisters and some for myself. Younger Sister received hers first and immediately emailed me… she knew, and she thanked me. Older Sister received hers just a few hours ago; I haven’t heard from her yet, but I know she knows. It holds the same special place in each of us.

As soon as my shipment arrived (and I realized that 5# is a LOT of tapioca), I demanded some be made. Wife understood — it’s a memory, it’s a tribute, it’s a memorial. Half a cup of pearls started soaking….

I didn’t realize that they had to soak overnight.

I looked at them. Within 30 minutes they felt soft enough… did they really need to soak overnight? They’d be dissolved and useless, wouldn’t they? But OK… we’ll follow the recipe. And gosh, they are a little bigger from soaking up the water, but they still seem smaller than I remember. Hrm. Is this going to turn out right?

Sleep. Wake. “Come on, Wife… let’s make pudding!” In fact, I gave Wife a bit of a hard time about making the pudding; it had to be a the priority for the day! I didn’t want to miss it. Hanging on to Grandma, just a moment longer.

I leave for a doctor’s appointment and Wife has started cooking. Very involved process… not difficult, just time consuming. You have to tend to it and stir and such for at least 30 minutes.

I return. Pudding.

I dig into it.

It’s not exactly as I remember it… but honestly, I have a hard time remembering it. The last time Grandma made us tapioca pudding was very long ago (she wasn’t well for many of her last years). But the exact flavor and texture didn’t really matter… it was all about the large pearls. 🙂  I fall back to my childhood, to being at Grandma’s house. I see the spoon, the bowl, the pearls, Grandma smiling at us and us smiling back at her.

This is the first time I paid attention to what it takes to make tapioca pudding. No it’s not hard, but it is time consuming. It takes a lot of planning — you can’t just decide to do it and whip it up as some 30 minute meal. You have to think ahead, you have to plan ahead, you have to work ahead. It takes time to obtain the tapioca. It takes time to soak the pearls. It takes time to cook and prepare it. It takes time for it to chill. You have to be thinking of things… you must have these things on your mind, long before they’re in front of you.

I never knew.

But now I know. And I can see… just how much love Grandma had for us.

Feeling worse

/ hsoi / 16 Comments

Sore throat still present, now with extra scratchiness!

To top it off… I screwed up my ankle last night.

I had just fallen asleep when I hear this sudden crash from the kitchen, Wife, and various Kiddo voices freaking out. It jolts me out of bed, I run towards the kitchen. Lots of “SASHA! SASHA!” and crashing going on, panicked sounding. I was wondering if the dog got one of the cats? the kids? Completely out of the question. No alarm going off, so no one broke into the house… but all this noise and freaking out! What could it be?

Well….

You see, Sasha likes to help out when someone is doing dishes. Put a dish in the dishwasher rack and puppydog likes to lick off anything she can find. Seems last night when she was done helping she turned to leave but her collar or tags got stuck in the bottom rack and she pulled the rack along with her… which freaked her out, then of course dishes and silverware clinking and crashing, which freaked her out more, but being it was all attached to her she couldn’t get away and so it just continued to be a horrible situation for the poor dog. Wife was able to intercept her, stop her, and free her, but oh the poor dog…. she was so freaked out. 😦

I screwed up my ankle because as I tore around through the hallway I slipped and came crashing to the ground. I was basically crawling into the kitchen last night… the kids said it was quite a sight.

What a mess. 🙂

I’m still all sore this morning, can’t speak well, can’t walk well… but I’m just hoping that Sasha isn’t scarred for life now, afraid of the kitchen, afraid of dishes clinking. Wife did a little “rehab” work with her last night before bed, coaxing her with some treats back into the kitchen. I hear puppy awake now, so I’m going to go see how she’s doing.

Duckling rescue

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Kiddos and I just rescued two ducklings.

They were born about a month ago in the neighborhood. Generally doing fine. A couple of weeks ago we noticed Momma wasn’t around as much, and every day she was around a little less. It got to a point where the ducklings were alone most of the time or perhaps tagging along after a couple random drakes.

Last night a neighborhood child came up to me to tell me about the “one-legged duck”. Eh? Investigated and sure enough, one of the ducklings was dragging its left leg. After thinking about what to do and speaking with the folks at the Austin Wildlife Rescue, I decided to take the ducklings in. We caught them, kept them in the garage last night, and today took them over there. They’ll be transferred to their duck rehabber, who has a lot of land and huge pond where they can get better. In fact, the injured duckling seemed to be doing a little better this morning, so maybe just staying off the leg along with some swimming will take care of things.

This is the third time we’ve done a duck rescue, so I guess being an Aggie household, this is officially tradition. 🙂

Good-bye, Grandma

/ hsoi / 8 Comments

I woke up early this morning (as you might tell from the timestamp).

I check my email and this came from my Dad:

Just a message to let you know that [my brother] and I are at our Mother’s bedside in the certain last moments of her 93 years of life. She is in hospice care and not expected to live through the night. At the moment the good Lord calls her home we will have a brief family prayer at the funeral home the next day and a prayer graveside that same day. None of you should worry or make any arrangements to be here. You can pay your respects the next time you are in Omaha. She had an indomitable spirit and strong will to live and gave her two boys great support and encouragement each and every day of our lives.  We revere her and hold her up for your prayers. I will keep you posted. No flowers or worries. I love you all. Dad.

I sit here not knowing what I write. It’s not really a surprise given her health, but she did have such a strong will to live that I guess if she lived for another 10 years I wouldn’t have been surprised at that either.

I remember the big white house on Ruggles Street. Picking crab apples. Curiously picking through the barn when we shouldn’t have. I remember walking down the hallway and stepping on a thumbtack with my big toe. The games we’d play with the blocks and that big steel dumptruck (which my Dad still has)… or games like Waterworks, Sorry, Pit… and our favorite, Rummikub. I spent a lot of time at Grandma and Grandpa’s house as a small child, and there were so many things there that fascinated me. A rush of that is coming back to me now, like the old letter scale, her desk of many drawers, the hurricane lamp, those old green couches that were always scratchy on our legs, the old radios and electric fans, the floor-model TV, the little candy dishes full of those Brach’s mixed bin candies (never liked those coconut neapolitan things, and that’s all that was left in the dish by the time we left… and then the next time we came over if she hadn’t been to the store yet).

Of course, how could I forget… it was Grandma Eleanor that gave us kids black licorice. Every time we’d visit, we’d so look forward to that as we only got it at her house. Technically it was Grandpa’s, but she always slipped us a piece if we were good. 🙂

I can see her face… heck, I remember when we’d act up and she would warn us “Don’t make me cross with you!” and boy you shaped up. How she would make us breakfast. It was the first time I had Shredded Wheat… no, not the frosted mini-ones, but that one big biscuit. Or the first time I had Grape Nuts and poured a big bowl (how’s a kid supposed to know!!), and while Grandpa forced me to eat it, she saved me from it. Heck, even little things like how there was always a tub of margarine on the dinner table.

Little things a boy remembers, eh?

Oh… and then there was how she would cook for us. When she knew we were coming to visit, she would travel all the way down to the PX, no matter how far out of the way it was, to buy tapioca for us. Not the little grains, but the big tapioca balls (the size of large peas) and make pudding for us. That was my favorite. Or her bread pudding… oh so good. Heck, as I write this, I can see her in the kitchen of the later house off Pacific Street, in the kitchen there cooking… putting the prep scraps into old plastic bread bags as she went along.

And then, the organ. You know, it was always us kids that messed around on the organ, but I swear I recall her playing it a time or two. The song “Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes” comes to mind, not sure if she played it but I know it was in one of those songbooks she had and I recall thinking it had a funny name.

One thing she liked to do with us was take us to the Humane Society. We’d go there with her, pet all the animals there, especially the cats. Maybe that’s where my love of cats started. She always had pet dogs (Puddin’!), and we didn’t have cats in my house growing up until later… so maybe it was from Grandma and all those visits that made me into a cat person. 🙂

She always took care of us. She never defied her husband, but she was always the foil/counter to a lot of his gruffness.

As I reflect back while I write this set of disjointed memories, one thing I realize is how much of my memories are from me as a young boy. I think that’s because the majority of my interaction with her was then. As she got older, eventually Alzheimer’s set in… heck, I remember after my Grandfather died she turned in the old station wagon (in which the A/C was always on “bi-level” and low fan speed, even in the worst summer heat… ugh!) and she got a bright red Chevy Blazer, eventually she realized that it wasn’t best for her to be on the road any more and she gave the keys up. She was able to come for my wedding, but then I’d recall when we’d visit we might talk but you could see her struggle with her memories… looking through a photo album and swearing she knew the people in there, but there was no way she could. It just broke my heart. But once things really set in, she just became happy. We’d visit her and while she likely didn’t know who we were, she was so happy and happy to see us. I recall the last time we saw her how much she just watched Youngest and was just drawn to him. Even tho she never could know my children, I’m glad they got to meet her, even if it was only a fraction of who she was.

Update: I just got off the phone with my younger sister. She called me, crying a bit, which of course is understandable. But we quickly turned the sadness into a great celebration of rememberance and she reminded me of so much more: the bingo set (we LOVED that little cage to roll around the balls); the stuffed koala bear; the Wooly Willy; the tea cups with the faces; those old perfume “vaporizer” with the little squeeze bulbs. I forgot how she called Kool-Aid “bug juice”. As I was talking to Younger Sister about riding in the car with Grandma (she too remembered the bi-level A/C), I found myself sitting in the front seat of the station wagon sitting next to Grandma and remembering all her purses… they were so neat. How we’d all be out in the backyard catching fireflies. How when we’d come over for an extended stay, she’d have towels and washclothes set out for us… but the neatest thing was always her Neutrogena soap… the clear/amber stuff.  And of course, how she would say “Well!” with this cute little twisted smiling face. I could never convey that here and do it any justice, but I see it clearly in my mind’s eye. Thank you, Sis, for the updated memories. 🙂

And I just remembered something she used to say every time she saw a ladybug: “Ladybug, Ladybug fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children will burn!”.  When we were kids that was just cute… looking back upon it in later years, it sounds terrible! But it was just our Grandma being funny.

She was tough. She was tenacious. She was firm and strict, but fair. While she may not have been the most lovey-dovey, you could see in every action the love and care she put into things. Always carried herself as a lady.

Thank you for everything, Grandma. I love you. I’ll miss you. Enjoy freedom.