News and more news

More than two weeks since my last post and not because of anything bad, which is good. My life's just been full.

Most exciting thing was arrival of "The Big Guy". Last Friday in February ... mid-morning ... I hear, "BOBBY. Bobby. Bobby." That's always bad. In the backyard we see "The Big Guy": 3-foot long, cottonmouth, water moccasin snake. He was the biggest snake I've ever seen in the wild. I ran out with the camera. I've included one picture here. You can find others at this link on FaceBook. I just let him crawl away back into the vacant lot from which he came. We've seen him once more since then. I'm fairly certain that god made him crawl across our lawn to convince Wife that snakes really DO live in Texas and that she shouldn't go looking for errant golf balls in the tall grass.

I flew to Columbus the last weekend in February to see my daughter be Lady Macbeth. My sister flew in from Chicago-land to join me. It was my first chance to see my daughter's and her husband's house. It's just great even if it was 18F outside. The new abode has even calmed down their dingo cat.

The Scottish Play was interesting. The director made some ambitious choices, which didn't always come off well, but naturally I enjoyed seeing Daughter on stage again. It had been many months since I had that pleasure. The play was, somewhat strangely, set in the swamps of Louisiana -- or at least somewhere south. When my girl came on stage for her first lines and she filled the theater with the most beautiful southern accent, my sister and I just looked at each other. We couldn't believe how lovely and fitting that accent was for she-who-would-be-queen -- refined, genteel, commanding. Daughter was so good she made me uncomfortable when later in the play she goes insane. She played it too well for me; I didn't like seeing her even acting like that. Yes, I'm extraordinarily proud of her. Check out her blog that I reference out to the right of this post somewhere. Acting is far from her only talent.

The following weekend was equally full. On Friday we drove into Houston and had dinner at my favorite restaurant - Tony Mandola's. Wife got her first taste of soft-shell crab. My past experience with them critters is that you have a 50/50 chance of them being edible. Well, these were the best I ever et ... Wife kindly shared one with me. And topped with crawfish and shrimp. Well, what can I say?

From there we drove to the theater district and saw the Houston Ballet Company perform "Marie". It was excellent -- easily in the top 10 ballets I've seen. The music was by Dimitri Shostakovitch -- wonderful -- abstract at times, lyical at others. Amy Fote danced the title role beautifully. She's light as a feather. The choreography didn't show off the male dancers' athleticism as much as I'd've liked, but the total presentation with as many as two-dozen dancers on stage at once was terrific.

The next day Wife dragged me for shopping. I have to say I view shopping with her only one step better than a root canal without anesthetic. We drove to a furniture store we've visited often: Gallery Furniture. Object of search: oriental rug for the family room. With the down turn in the economy we'd scaled back the amount we were willing to spend. We'd looked at rugs there before, but hadn't found any that met our price and style requirements. We figured we'd give it another shot since they might have something on sale. We looked through the stack of machine-made rugs and then through the hand-made. Then the salesperson showed us one he had hanging. Beautiful, sort of tannish-greenish. Not what we'd really been thinking about, but both Wife and I really liked it. And, it was almost 58% off, which put it just inside our price range.
Then a bad thing happened, Wife looks further along the rack and finds a dark blue background with traditional Persian pattern. They haul this down and lay it out next to the first. It's on sale too. We like them both. Independently, Wife and I think the same thing: one for the family room and one for the dining room ... and they're interchangeable ... when we get tired of one look we can swap them and get a completely different look. Oh, dear. After much hemming and hawing, we pull the trigger. They load them into the back of Wife's Merc and home we go. I drag 150 pounds of carpet into the house and we lay them out. They look better than we hoped. What do you think? And, busted heck out of the budget, but never mind; my flat screen TV can wait.

Last bit of good news comes a couple days ago. We have been battling Louis Shanks furniture store about the sofa and chairs we purchased. The chairs were floor models and we hadn't bargained for that. Seams were ripped. Ticking was hanging out. LS took them back for repair. They finally arrived this week. Suitably repaired and they look great with the new carpet as you see above.

Life is good.