But First, A Killdeer...
Killdeer are pretty little birds that nest on the ground. Killdeer are graceful plovers that are seen just about everywhere -- lawns, golf courses, athletic fields, and parking lots. They are shorebirds you can see without going to the beach.

This little beauty made a nest in the stones at the base of a tree at the entrance walk of a church. You could walk right by her and never notice she was there. If a killdeer thinks her nest is threatened, she moves away from it and fakes having a broken wing. This way she looks like an easy target and draws the threat away from the nest. 

In the two photos below you can see her on the nest and then drawing me out into the parking lot by pretending to be injured. I didn't spend too much time as I really didn't want to stress her.

On to the Park
No story. I just thought you might enjoy a few pictures I took with the new lens that Linda allowed me to buy. It's pretty big (a wheelbarrow would be handy), but it lets me get a bit closer to the birds. Linda let me buy it so I wouldn't be gored by a bison when we visit Yellowstone (she saw a news story). So, lucky me.

The photos in the gallery below were taken at Brazos Bend State Park, a wonderful place only about 12 miles as the crow flies, but about 26 miles and 40 minutes by car. There are wonderful water birds and who knows how many alligators. There are just photo opportunities galore.

The white cattle egret is pretty common around this part of Texas and has really spread across the whole country. The first birds were originally from Africa and came here in 1953. The tan feathers are breeding plumage.

Ducks in a tree! The black-bellied whistler is one of the few ducks you will find regularly in trees. Twenty years ago I had to go down toward Corpus Christi to see whistlers, but they have gradually moved north and are now common here.

There are few birds more eye-catching than egrets and herons. The little blue heron is particularly pretty with its slate-blue body and slightly reddish head. 

The boat-tailed grackle is not a pretty bird, and I unfortunately did not do a good job of capturing his iridescent feathers. He can be found in the wetlands along the east and gulf coasts and the near inland areas. His cousin the common grackle can be found in super market parking lots and is also known as the rat-with-wings.

Thanks for visiting, and, as always, we like to hear from you.

After finishing a few errands the other day, I thought I would take a visit to a local pocket park to see if there might be anything interesting. As it turned out, it was a pretty good day that included an egret, a heron, and a pretty good sized alligator.

The gator was hanging around under a boardwalk and he stuck his head out from underneath. Leaning over the railing I was able to get this photo of his head with a unique "look down on top" perspective. The head you see in the photo is, I am going to guess, 18" to 24" long - I really didn't get close enough to pull out my tape measure. This would make him about 13-14 feet long, overall. A very big boy.

At the top of the photo you can see that just the nostrils on his snout are out of the water. They are closed in this photo, sealed the way they would be if he were under water. His eyes, which you can't see, are also out of the water and are located just to the front of his round, pouchy, jowls.

After a while he started moving across the pond very slowly and silently, just as you see in the photo at the top. As I watched him, the theme music from Jaws kept running through my head. 

The tall, stately pine tree in the front of our house has gone away. While the tree was healthy and solid, it was just too big and too close to the house. So, at the age of about 40, its time had come.

When we moved here some 33 years ago, this tree was one of a cluster of three little pines, all planted extremely close to each other. They were so close together that they really were not thriving. One died, and then there were two. 

It didn't take much more time to figure out that even the two trees were not going to do well so close together. So one weekend out came the saw and the axe. And then there was one. 

That's all our one pine tree needed -- a little breathing room. It absolutely thrived, growing taller and stronger year by year until it towered over our home. It is an old friend that has stood sentinel in the front of the house for many years. But like Linda and me, it was time for this wonderful tree to retire. 

So what took forty years to grow, was completely dismantled in about 2-1/2 hours. The little slide show below shows the progress from tree to flat spot on the lawn.

When you cut down a 60 foot tall tree, you end up with a lot of tree stuff in your yard that has to go somewhere. Where? Well, it gets turned into mulch in very short order as you can see below.

Thanks for visiting.

What a step up! Holy cow!

The header photo above shows our new RV, and the picture below shows me standing in front of it. These were taken the day we made the deal, just after we signed the sales agreement. The one below a “selfie” Hey, the kids have nothing on me. I am nothing if I am not up-to-date on the latest technology.

How far is a long way? Well, we started with this little pop-top van, which we lovingly named the Ag-Wagon, as it allowed us to go to the Aggie football games without having to stay at the Relax Inn, home of the see-through towel. The Ag-Wagon was our start in RVing. We traveled Texas from the Gulf Coast in the east to the Davis Mountains in the west and on up into the Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas. The photo below is in Port O’Conner, Texas, just across the road from the Intra-Coastal Waterway. It opened a new world of travel to us, and it will always have a warm spot in our hearts.

Warm spot or not, it didn’t take long to outgrow the Ag-Wagon, as you can imagine. We bought our second RV, a 26′ Trail-Lite B+ in the winter of 2004. We dubbed it the SLU-Mobile as April was in law school at Saint Louis University, but the name never quite stuck, and it was usually just the “RV.” But what a step up! It had a real bed, a real kitchen, andreal plumbing. There was a dinette, a sofa, and standing room. It was a real motorhome, and it has given us a great ten years, traveling from the Atlantic Coast to the Grand Canyon and north into Canada.

Now it is time for Act 3. We want a little more comfort and a little more room. Our new-to-us motorhome is a 34 foot Winnebago with two slide outs and all sorts of room. The comfort level has again increased exponentially. Not only is there a full-sized couch, but also a nice swivel rocker along with a dinette. In the bedroom the bed is queen-sized and there is closet and drawer space galore. The bath includes a shower with a skylight and glass sliding door, and a nice medicine chest over the vanity. In the kitchen area, Linda will have a pantry, a 2-door refrigerator, and plenty of drawers. There is a roof-mounted satellite dish for the TV (all I need is a subscription to Dish) and a Sirius satellite radio. In the cockpit there is a back-up camera, a downhill brake, and automatic leveling jacks. Talk about up-town!

Here are some interior photos. These were taken by the dealership for their website.

We’ll be on our way in style with this rig.

More photos will come along later. Thanks for visiting.

This started out to be a quick note to say that the cedar waxwings have returned and spring is nigh. But alas, the weather has been fickle and spring is not yet on the horizon.

WINTER IN HOUSTON
First the news is that it is still very much winter in Houston. It seems that there was an ice storm overnight, and Houston completely shut down today. Even though most of our population has moved here from colder parts of the country, being in Houston has caused them all to forget everything they ever knew about winter.

All the morning national television programs were pre-empted as the Houston stations could not contain their excitement and had what seemed like every reporter and cameraman on their staffs out doing “on-the-street” interviews and reports. There must have been 100′s of videos of cars and trucks and buses sliding on the flyovers (Houston’s term for the very long and high multi-level expressway interchanges. Of course all schools and colleges were closed. Even my gym opened four hours late.

So, yes, there is winter in Houston and it is here now. And it seems as though it will be with us for another week. I know all of you in the northeast and midwest are feeling sorry for us. You should know we appreciate your compassion.

A HINT OF SPRING
Now for the waxwings and spring thing. Just a day before all of this winter ice foolishness we were on the patio enjoying balmy weather and watching the cedar waxwings. There were seemingly hundreds of them flitting in and out of the bushes and trees. They don’t ever stay long. These beautiful birds typically fly in to town, gorge themselves on ligustrum berries, and with full bellies move on to the north. So seeing the waxwings generally means that spring is soon to be on its way. Well, apparently there will be a slight delay.

A Waterfall In Houston?
The past week or two it has been cold in Houston (for Houston), and Linda and I warmed up our world by taking a quick road trip to a tropical rainforest. Actually we just visited theCockrell Butterfly Center at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The Cockrell is a beautiful glass enclosed tropical garden with a 50-foot waterfall. It is a small oasis in the middle of a big city filled with exotic plants and hundreds of gorgeous butterflies.

Some Butterfly Pix
The butterflies don’t stop and light for very long, so taking pictures was a catch-as-catch-can situation, but here are some shots I was lucky enough to get.

Good Bye 2013
We took our last boat ride of the year this past weekend. It was a bit chilly, but it was a lovely day and the lake was as smooth as glass. We spent about two-and-a-half hours on the lake, and we couldn’t have asked for a better way to finish our year.

We hope your year was as fine as ours was, and we wish you all the best for 2014.

Happy New Year!
Posted in Unc

It’s Christmas time again, and Linda and Don want to wish everyone the best of the season. We are thinking of all of you during this special time of year. The weather down here in Texas has been a bit unseasonable (and unreasonable), and that has kept Don from putting out our usual outdoor light display. But if it will be tee-shirt weather this weekend, the decorations will be put up during halftime of some football game.

Inside our home the tree is up and we are fully decorated for the holidays. We are especially proud of our tree which we think perfectly exemplifies our Christmas decorating motif.

Linda has been wanting to go on a cruise to Alaska, so this year Santa will make her wish come true and bring her a trip to America’s last frontier. I am not sure how she is going to get home, but I know she will figure out something. Merry Christmas Girlfriend!

Don’s gift this year is his new-found strength. He started working out at our city fitness center after retirement back in June to keep from becoming a total couch potato. In mid-October he decided he wanted to lift weights, and he engaged a trainer to help him. The focus is on what is known as power lifting which has three components: squat, bench press, and dead lift. The photo below shows Don in his Christmas finery completing a dead lift of 225 pounds which ain’t bad for a septuagenarian! In competition this would equate to a 35 year old lifting over 375 pounds (there’s an actual formula for this).

This past weekend was not only the end of the Texas A&M 2013 home football season, but it was also the end of an era. Saturday the Aggies played the final game to be played at the existing Kyle Field. The stadium will go through a $450 million rebuild over the next two years and will be the finest college stadium in the country when it is completed.

It was an exceptionally meaningful game in several ways. Along with it being the final game in the existing stadium, it was the A&M program’s 700th win (only the 18th school to do so); it was senior night; and it was most likely the final home game for Heisman winner Johnny Manziel (aka Johnny Football). The Ags won 51 – 41 over SEC opponent, Mississippi State.

The New Stadium
The new stadium will be built over two years with a football season squeezed into that timeline. As you might imagine, the construction schedule is very tight. The first year they will build a south end zone and a new east stands. Then between the 2014 and 2015 seasons they will completely renovate the north end zone (only 15 years old) and build a new west stands. The completed stadium will hold 102,500, up from its current 82,600. Pictures and a video of the new stadium can be found here.

The game on Saturday was over at 6 PM. They then worked all night removing the sod (it was actually sold to the truly goofy as a memento), and they started lowering the field on Sunday (it will be lowered 10 feet to improve sight lines). It is an extremely tight schedule, and no time is being wasted. Check the live web cams here to see the progress.

For those of you who have trouble with a university spending almost a half-billion dollars on a football stadium, allow me to explain how this works. In Texas all expenditures for athletics must come from athletic department-generated revenues (ticket sales, etc.) or donations. No money may come from school funds. Football and basketball provide the only positive cash flow in any university athletic program — they fund the entire athletic program. So maximizing football revenues is a prime objective. This stadium project is already totally funded and already sold out for the 2015 season.

Some Info About the University
If you think Texas A&M is just a football factory a’ la schools such as Alabama or LSU, let me share a few interesting facts about the academic side of the school. Texas A&M is regarded as on of the finest universities in the nation — public or private. The university’s schools of architecture, biology, business, and engineering all have top-10 programs. One out of every 10 veterinarians in the U.S. graduates from A&M. It ranks second overall in earnings of graduates over a 25 year period, and it ranks in the top 15 schools whose graduates are Fortune 100 top executives.

There are lots of other Top 10 or Top 25 lists that include the Texas A&M name, but suffice it to say that it is a world-class university in every way. I am very proud it is the alma mater of both my daughter and her husband.

Considering it was the highest ranking CBS college football game in the past 27 years, I figure there is a good chance that most of you saw the Texas A&M – Alabama game this past Saturday. Since Linda and I were in our usual seats (no we didn’t sell our tickets for $1400, the going price in our section of the stadium), I thought you might be interested in how we saw the game from inside the stadium.

This was a fantastic football weekend. To me it was close to being the quintessential football weekend — only some cooler weather could have made it better (well, that and an Aggie win). We’ve all heard the phrase, ”the pageantry of sport.” While it has been used so often it has become a cliche, it definitely described this football game.

Ever since Texas A&M upset Alabama in Tuscaloosa last year, everyone in Alabama and Texas has had this game circled on their calendar. And when game time finally arrived, the atmosphere was positively electric. It started Friday night when the Aggie Midnight Yell Practice (a sort of pep rally held before every football game) had a record attendance of over 50,000. 50,0000 – that’s just to get ready for the game. Attendance at the game was almost 88,000.

Saturday found the tailgating in full swing. No matter where you looked there where canopies and cookers and who knows how many people eating who knows how much good Texas barbecue and consuming who knows how many adult beverages. Over the past 10 years tailgating at Texas A&M has grown almost exponentially, and today it is considered one of the ten best tailgating experiences in the college football. Add that to one of the country’s loudest stadiums, stir in two top-10 teams, and you have the perfect ingredients for a great day of college football.

In our 15 years of season tickets, I haven’t quite experienced what was happening on Saturday. Kyle Field was absolutely rocking from start to finish. And I have never seen so many white 12th Man towels waving as I saw this past Saturday. They told everyone to wear maroon and wave white. Well, that’s what happened – to the nth degree. And loud? At one time Linda actually handed me her soda cup so I could feel it vibrating! The noise level continued for the entire game.

The 12th Man (the student body) was in its best form – possibly ever. A&M has the country’s largest student section with over 30,000 at every game, and they are known for their controlled yells. During pre-game warm-ups we watched the ‘Bama players do a double-take and look up at the stands with surprise and just a degree of astonishment. It was obvious from their reaction that even though they had experience in all the big venues, they had never experienced 80,000 Aggies doing a synchronized yell. And the student section kept it going all day.

Half time was as incredible as the game. Alabama brought their Million Dollar Band, which was very good with their crimson uniforms and pretty twirlers. Then The Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band took the field. The world’s largest military marching band gave its usual incredible halftime performance of great march music and intricate maneuvers delighting us as usual and leaving Alabama fans in absolute awe.

Before and after the game Linda and I had occasion to speak with a number of different ‘Bama fans. Every one of them (not some, but all) brought up how great the Aggie fans are and how much they were enjoying their experience in College Station. A number of them said they had attended Midnight Yell and were blown away by it. One woman was taking a photo of the “Hats Off” sign at the MSC because she thought it was “so cool” and wanted to share it with the folks back home. The MSC (Memorial Student Center) is considered a memorial to Aggies who have fallen in battle, so everyone (men & women) are requested to remove their hats.

And finally…
… the actual game. What a great game! We’re up 14 points. It’s tied. We’re down 7 points. We are going to tie it up. Oops, a broken route and an interception in the end zone. Halftime is Alabama 28-14 instead of 21 – 21. ‘Bama goes 3-and-out to open the second half. We are driving, and the receiver bobbles the ball on the 15 — interception and 85 yards for a TD. 35 – 14. Ags fight back, including a 95 yard touchdown pass on a 3rd and 9, and the game ends 49 – 42 with the Ags trying a last ditch on-side kick.

Of course you also need a Johnny Football update, so here it is. Johnny Manziel was fantastic and put himself right back at the top of the Heisman Trophy race for this year. He passed for 464 yards and 5 touchdowns. He also ran for 98 yards. His passing yardage and his total yardage are both in the top 5 all-time SEC performances.

I love this team. They gave this game and the fans absolutely everything they had. They left nothing on the field. Yes, I know the final score. But I also know they gained more yards and scored more points against a Nick Saban-coached Alabama team than any other team ever has. And they never quit. As Aggies say, they didn’t lose, they just ran out of time. It’s not often you walk away from a game that your team loses with smile on your face, but it happened this weekend. It was that good.

And no matter what the game’s outcome was, Texas A&M was absolutely a winner this weekend. In all respects, this was college football at its absolute best.

We wish all of you could have been there with us.

I am sorry we haven’t posted more often. There has been no summer trip for us this year. We have stayed at home so we can deal with any retirement paperwork as needed rather than have it sit around the post office for thirty days.

Since we are not on the road, Don is teaching some competition math workshops at a local summer academy. But this leaves the weekends for us to enjoy time on Lake Conroe. And that is a good thing as our daytime temperatures are finding the mid- to upper-nineties which are typical for Houston in July. In fact, we even reached 108 degrees one Saturday – not a record but darn close.

Nothing helps beat this heat more than being on the lake, unless it is being in the lake. There is no way any swimming pool can feel as relaxing and soothing as a lake. I won’t try to explain it – I can’t – but that is the way it is.

Lots of people have lots of favorite places to do their bathing. Some like a strip of sand where they can beach their boat, while others just drop anchor somewhere off shore. Our swimming hole is a little cove where we are generally by ourselves with the exception of a great egret and a great blue heron. The heron is actually a bit away from us sitting on a piling or the very corner of a dock. This seems to be a favorite place of his. The egret is much closer – just yards away.

We enjoy a cruise for an hour or two and then head to “our place,” drop anchor, and have some lunch. Then, against all the dire warnings of my mother, we head into the water without waiting the requisite one hour. We do nothing but bob about for an hour or so. And life is good, very good.

Often we have a visitor as the great egret will be there doing some sport fishing along the water’s edge. He is usually there when we arrive and still there when we leave. He is not bothered by us in the least.

One thing you can learn from watching egrets and herons is patience. They are incredibly patient birds, waiting and watching. They are never in a hurry, and they seem to know that they will always be fed if they just wait.

This past Saturday we had a new experience. We had an opportunity to try out our TowBoat USA insurance – Triple A for boats, Linda calls it. A small electrical problem cropped up just as we were heading back home, and we were dead in the water. We called TowBoat and they were at our side within 25 minutes. By then I had figured out the problem, but we had them tow us home anyway just for the experience. I am pleased to say the system worked. You pay for these things and hope you never have to use them. But it is comforting to know that when they are needed, they are there.