Dodged a Bullet

All these images are from Weather Underground. These are screen shots of their projections of Hurricane Dean. So if they're copyrighted (but I didn't see any "copyright" info) they would be copyright Weather Underground.

Some of these earlier preditions had Dean coming right up into our neck of the woods or at the very least inundating us with quite a bit of rain.

My family grew up in north east Oklahoma and tornadoes were a matter of course. So when we moved down here I thought "Hurricanes?? Its just a big 'ole twister over water - big deal."

When I found out that hurricanes are so doggone big that they have tornadoes as a "side effect" I got a bit worried about living here.

Turns out that these hurricanes can throw rain on you even if you're a couple hundred miles from the "eye".

Fortunately for us (but unfortunately for the people of Veracruz) the hurricane didn't come nearly as far to the north as originally predicted.

And hurricane season 2007 is just getting started.

Olive Garden

While we were out on vacation we saw a lot of neat places but we didn't have an "official" anniversary dinner.

Once we got back home, we took the kiddo to spend a couple days with my folks (what are grandparents for? :-) and then wifey and I went to her favorite restaurant (Olive Garden) for a nice, long, calm anniversary lunch.

We ordered too much and brought home a "doggie bag" for supper.

I really love my wife.

Hurricane Dean

This is a screenshot of Weather Underground and their Tropical Storm: 5 Day Forecast for Hurricane Dean at 2pm today.

Erin went north of us and this one is gonna make landfall a bit to the south of us. I have a feeling that we're gonna get some rain from Dean.

Dean looks (right now anyway) like it'll make landfall in the Mexican mainland sometime Wednesday night/early Thursday morning.

I might just go visit my little brother...

More books

While visiting South Padre Island recently, my family shopped at a couple different stores with "used books" sections. There is a funny thing that will happen when my pop and I are going through a smallish section of used books: whoever makes it to the books first starts on one end and the other one will start at the other end (that way we don't get in each other's way).

That's not the funny part. You see, even though my (borderline unnatural) love for books was fostered by hours of helping pop sort through his book collections; pop and I have (almost) completely different tastes in books and authors. So, as we're working our way through the books, occasionally each of us will run across a book that we think the other might like and we'll say something to the effect of "You might want to take a look at this one". I've figured out that when I see a book that I might want I will go ahead and add it to my stack because if I don't I won't be able to find it later. And I can always take books out of the stack.

The funny part is when pop and I pass in the middle of the book section, each of us with a stack of books. Despite the fact that pop and I maintain our unique tastes in books and authors, it will invariably happen that one (or both) of us will say "Um, were you going to buy that or were you just looking at it?" The other day I even talked up a book that I had noticed in hopes that pop would add it to his stack and lose interest in another one that he had picked up.

The upside of all this silliness is that it is a harmless and educational vice. Now if we only had time to read all these books we buy! Pop does much better at this than I do - Wednesday morning he was reading a book while sitting in the hot tub. I never have been able to do the "bathtub reader" thing.

Two Story Dining

While we were in Corpus Christi we passed the "famous" two story Whataburger and we dined in a (not so famous) Subway with a second floor dining room. Aren't you impressed?

I have photographs but right now I can't the little cord I need to transfer photos from wifey's digital camera to wifey's laptop computer. I probably shoved it in the bag of dirty clothes - it'll turn up.

Pictures will be posted as soon as I find that foolish cord!

Happy Anniversary to us!

We celebrated 13 years of marriage (on the 13th) by visiting the Blue Ghost. This is the historic USS Lexington permanently parked in Corpus Christi Bay. The Lex is open 9am - 6pm and there are currently five tours on the boat. The Flight Deck, the Foc'sle (Forecastle), the Gallery Deck, the Lower Decks, and the Hangar Deck. The Hangar Deck is the part of the ship that you enter and it now includes an IMAX theater, many displays and, of course, a concession stand. We got there at 10am on a Monday and there were very few people. If you haven't seen the Lex, you really should.

Go on a weekday, go early, tour the flight deck early (it warms up pretty quick up there) and just enjoy yourself.

After our (running) tour of the Blue Ghost we went to the Texas State Aquarium. It's a bit pricey for my taste but it was a special occasion and they have shows going on all day long.

Old Friends

This morning we postponed leaving on vacation so that we could go have coffee with some old friends. They're not old - they're younger than my wife and I, but we've known them for seven or eight years.

We had a really nice visit but I can't tell you their names or where they live or even show a screenshot from Google City Lights of their "neighborhood" at night.

Why all the "cloak and dagger", you ask? Let me put it to you this way - we were talking about blogging and net stuff and when I mentioned the name of my blog the man said "It'll probably be blocked". Even though I sometimes find the ACLU (and their ilk) annoying, THANK GOD for differences of opinion and freedom of speech in the USA! And for the 2nd Amendment - that's the one that protects all the rest.

They say "You don't know what you've got until it's gone" - I sincerely hope that this (very comfortable) next generation learns the value of their freedoms before it's too late.

I like it when I'm right

I told a good friend of mine recently that I would be back at work after taking three days off and "nothing will go wrong in those three days that I can't fix". Looks like I was right - looks like the office did just fine without me.

I'll have to take some time off more often.

Change of Plans

As I mentioned in my earlier post here, "These images are all from the free version of "Google Earth" available at http://earth.google.com/ It will only appear this way if you check Earth City Lights under NASA under Featured Content. All these images are copyright 2007 Google, copyright 2007 Terrametrics and copyright 2007 Europa Technologies."

In the aforementioned post I showed a Google Earth City Lights image of where we were planning on going on vacation with my in-laws. It turns out that my in-laws (they're super by the way) had just finished hosting a conference and, being a little tired, they weren't really up to traveling 8 hours one-way to "relax". So we all decided to hang out at the campground where the conference had been and just take it easy.

Here is the Google Earth City Lights image (again at an "eye altitude" of 50 miles) of the campground and surrounding area. This campground is located just to the south of Monterrey, Mexico; a modern metropolitan city if there ever was one.

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A short drive to the southeast you can go shopping in Villa de Santiago and a short drive to the north you can find modern malls, Wal-Mart, H-E-B, Pollo Loco, Burger King, McDonald's, many museums, a planetarium, amusement parks, and that's not all.

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Despite the somewhat large population of Monterrey and the amount of automobile exhaust connected to that, Monterrey does not suffer from the pollution problems plaguing Mexico City. This is because Mexico City is surrounded by mountains and that puts it in the middle of a "bowl" while Monterrey is wrapped around a mountain so the smog isn't trapped. (but i digress...)

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We had a great time, played Rummikub (in Spanish) and I found the whole experience very relaxing. Three cheers for great in-laws!!!

Made in Oklahoma

Last night I had a great conversation with an old friend. I haven't had the chance to talk with this fellow in a long time. We reminisced for two hours and seems to me like we both needed that phone call. Did you ever have the experience where you pick up the phone and it's somebody that you haven't talked to in like, forever, and it's just so good to hear their voice? It was like that.

But that's not what I want to tell you. You see, this friend is the one (I think I've mentioned before) that makes a hot sauce called SALSA NOCHES. This year SALSA NOCHES is going to be in the Made in Oklahoma building at the Tulsa State Fair! This is just so cool!

I know some of you are thinking "Whats the big deal?". If you're thinking that, then you've never been to a good state fair. This year the Tulsa State Fair is going to be September 27 - October 7 and if you're going to be anywhere near Tulsa Oklahoma then do yourself a favor and go to the fair. Here is a link to a PDF map of the fairgrounds - the fairgrounds is in Tulsa and it is quite a landmark.

Also, this year Oklahoma celebrates 100 yrs of statehood so the fair will probably be even a bigger deal than it normally is (and its normally a big deal). In fact the I.P.E. building boasts the world's largest unobstructed interior volume. This HUGE building is where we would go to the Tulsa Gun and Knife Show when I was growing up. And in front of the International Petroleum Exposition building is the famous Golden Driller.

Obsession

This is the next DVD that I'm going to buy. Here you can see the trailer and here you can check out a twelve minute clip for "Obsession - Radical Islam's War Against the West"

Seriously people, this is NOT a joke.

Unexpected Comedy

My wife and I are (sorta) fans of M Night Shyamalan (i never can pronounce his last name). So when one of his movies makes it to my local chain video rental store (I'm nothing if not cheap) we get some popcorn, rent the movie and prepare for a good old-fashioned scare.

Okay, admittedly a couple of his movies are more "freaky" than "scary" but they're still chilling.

The other day my favorite movie date (wifey) & i rented the only one of his videos that we had not yet seen - Lady in the Water. I'm not gonna give away the plot but I gotta tell you - I was more scared by Monty Python's Meaning of Life. When I asked sweetie her opinion of this "horror movie" she just rolled her eyes. It's like M Night was trying to make a black comedy instead of a horror film - it honestly made us laugh.

Disappointing.

We're Not in Kansas Anymore

So I stop in to my local video rental chain store to pick up Smallville Season Two Disc 4 (my wife and I have recently become followers of the show after she saw a few old episodes on Spanish TV) and they don't have it. Well, this is a bummer. If I was looking for a movie and it wasn't in, I'd just get another movie but I'm actually following this teenage soap opera. (oh the shame)

We even had a bit of confusion when we rented season 2 Disc 1 - we had seen the last episode of season 1 a couple nights before and now nothing was making any sense. My wife took it straight back to the video rental chain store and the teenagers behind the counter just feigned confusion. [This is the part where I really refrain from making tacky comments and just get on with the narrative] Anyway, my wife is bound and determined to see the episodes in order so, one day while I'm at work, she uses her new laptop to look up episode guides, plot synopsis, just all sorts of Smallville trivia and calls me at work to let me know. This kind of research is a bit out of character for her. Normally my wife just uses the net to look for recipes and decorating tips (not being sexist, just stating a fact) and I have to do all the "serious" research (yes, referring to Smallville as serious was tongue-in-cheek but let's not dwell on that).

So Smallville has effected us. (Not to mention that I could really become addicted to watching television shows with no commercials)

Apparently somebody else has also recently started following Smallville because I keep finding season 2 discs out. But not to fear. My resourceful wife picked up House instead (she knows I like medical TV shows) and each of these episodes is a stand alone so I don't have to watch them in sequence for everything to make sense! (I know you're so happy for me :-)

Books You're Not Supposed to Read

From the Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades: The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, Oxford University Press, 1955. This is an English translation of the earliest biography of Muhammad. It was "written by a pious Muslim" and "virtually every page presents a devastating refutation of the whitewashed, peaceful Muhammad of PC myth".

Here's an idea: If you don't believe it when people tell you how violent the Qur'an is then read it yourself. According to this PIG, the "clearest and most accurate English translation" is The Koran by N.J. Dawood. Muslims tend to dislike this translation because Dawood wasn't a Muslim. The two most accure English translations by Muslims are those by Abdullah Yusuf Ali and Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall. Both of these are available in multiple editions under various titles however both are "marred by a pseudo-King James Bible English which makes them irritating to read".
Personally, when I have needed to reference the Koran I've relied on the good old internet and gone to http://quod.lib.umich.edu/k/koran/

And a third book that the Politically Correct "Thought Police" don't want you to read is An Introduction to Islamic Law by Joseph Schacht; Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1982. They say that this is "a weighty book, as eye-opening as it is scholarly and that the author "is refreshingly free of the bias that dominates studies of Islam in universities today". A sample from the Mr Schacht's book reads: "The basis of the Islamic attitude towards unbelievers is the law of war; they must be either converted or subjugated or killed."
Definitely NOT Politically Correct :-)

Everything hurts and it's raining.

My muscles ache, my best friend is moving away, and while trying to bring home a bookcase (that my friend left for me) it started raining.

Fortunately the bookcase was in another friend's pickup truck and he got to my house and got the bookcase unloaded before more than a few drops could hit it. I, on the other hand, got turned around and ended up driving all over town in the rain.

By the time I got home my wife had wiped off the few drops of rain that hit the bookcase before it got under cover and now it's just waiting to be loaded with books.