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April 28, 2005
The Apocalypse Approaches?
From today's Boston Globe. What would Cotton Mather think?
Posted by stan at 10:31 AM
April 25, 2005
Serene Stan
We are going on three work days now where I have not experienced one iota of job-related frustration. I think this might somehow be related to me tendering my resignation last Wednesday.
Posted by stan at 12:29 PM
April 23, 2005
Grocery Shopping
Yes, Sara being out of town had a significant impact on the above grocery haul being able to happen. Lets break it down by the numbers:
0 - Products purchased that are either whole-wheat or organic
1 - Number of old ladies that asked me where the kosher aisle was (i didn't know)
2 - Number of fruits & vegetables (2 apples)
3 - Pounds of Sausage
17 - Number of fruits & vegetables if you count the 15 fruit flavored popsicles
31 - Percent of final bill allocated to hops-based products
89 - Cents extra the fine folks at Red Baron Pizza charge for flat crust frozen pizzas (shouldn't it be the other way around? Thin crust = less dough used?)
150 - Number of times I've contemplated bacon-wrapped sausage for dinner tonight
Also, in the wierd product department, look at this:
How can there be a "Gourmet Award" for watermelon rind? The only thing I've seen that tops this is the cactus leaves that they sell a few aisles down.
Posted by stan at 05:29 PM | Comments (1)
April 22, 2005
Houston is Warm
Eighty-friggin-five percent humidity this morning!
Posted by stan at 09:55 AM
Copy Cat
You might find a remarkably similar picture here as well.
Posted by stan at 09:53 AM
April 19, 2005
Bird Guy
Bird Guy just opened a phone conversation with the salutation, "Ground control to major Tom, the cranes can be viewed from the ditch!"
There are also apparently redwinged-black birds.
Posted by stan at 12:21 PM
The Weekend
This past weekend we had a bit of a dilemma. Sara wanted to go to the beach, while I had a hankering to tour some large petro-chemical plants. However, we both agreed that we wanted the to option of driving our rental car straight into a large body of water if we so chose. Normally the above is a kind of hard to reconcile to-do list, but this is Texas baby! Where everything is possible!
We stopped by Dunkin' Donuts for some iced coffee then jumped on Rt. 288 headed south. Soon enough, were were driving through lovely burgs like Clute, TX: Population 3,100 people & 11 huge chemcial operations (perhaps you've heard of their Mosquito Festival?) We did some sightseeing around Clute and its neighbor Freeport, TX for as long as we could hold our breathe. Then, convienently, we drove another half mile down the road from the plants and arrived at Bryan Beach State Park.
We were thinking the same thing that you probably are, just how safe is it to go swimming less than a mile from 11 aging chemical operations? Well, judging from the number of people fishing it can't be that bad. Plus, when you went in the water the burning sensation only took 5 or 10 minutes to get use to.
So at that point we had toured the plants and been to the beach, but how about that option to drive the car right into the water? Well, luckly folks in Texas either really, really, really like there cars or really, really, really dislike the idea of walking to the beach from a parking lot. Take a look:
OK, so the police in the above picture are driving out to make these people get there cars off the beach and give them a ticket and a fine or something right? No, they were actually patroling and giving tickets to anyone they saw WALKING down the beach.
Here's another:
You have to give these folks credit though, there's no need to bring an umbrella with you when you can sit comfortably in the shade of your Ford F-350.
Posted by stan at 11:23 AM | Comments (2)
April 17, 2005
Weekend Margaritas
Houston does have some perks.
Posted by stan at 11:38 PM
Mr. Plum in the Study With a Candlestick
Corporate housing is officially out of control.
Posted by stan at 11:34 PM
April 13, 2005
Making A Difference By Leading The Way
If I could have hooked the old Commodore 64 up to the internet about 20 years ago, you might have seen something like this...
Posted by stan at 12:11 AM
April 11, 2005
Search Terms
So I noticed today that someone got to my site by doing a search for "pet chickens". OK, fair enough, there have been wierder searches that lead people here, but the domain name of the person doing that search? tyson.com. As in Tyson Chicken.
It made me feel kind of good to see that, I guess that means that there is at least one person out there that really, really, really likes what they do for a living. Lucky chicken-lover.
Posted by stan at 05:25 PM
Falcon Alert
Apparently there is a peregrine falcon circling around our building right now. I know this because the bird guy that sits in the next cube over from me is positively bursting. He is currently on the phone with some of his fellow birders giving a play-by-play.
Fun facts:
1. Peregrine Falcons winter in the Houston area, they don't stay full time - kind of like up.
2. The falcon outside right now is a "big ol' male"
3. The military has apparently studied how peregrin falcons dive, hoping to incorporate that into the air force somehow I guess.
4. They are "amazing flyers", which I think is a good thing since they are, you know, birds and all.
Posted by stan at 11:54 AM
April 10, 2005
Mystery Breakfast Food
Sara and I decided it would be a good idea to start the day with a Dunkin' Donut's iced coffee, so we drove on over to Bellaire this morning. While we were ordering our coffees and donuts, we noticed a sign for something called kalache (I'm not sure of the spelling here). It is apparently some type of breakfast dish, one that we've never seen before and suspect might be a Houston-only type thing.
Needless to say, I was intrigued (Sara was disgusted). I ordered one sausage and cheese kalache which the fine staff at DDs very helpfully warmed up in the microwave for me. It looked kind of like one of those butter cresent rolls that you pop in the oven for ten minutes and come out a nice golden brown.
Anyway, with quite a bit of anticipation I sunk my teeth into the kalache and inside, to my delight, there was a spicy little hot dog like sausage and the inside of the roll was coated with cheese! The best description we have been able to come up with is that it is like a mini pig-in-a-blanket, except the pig completely covered by the roll part. We have taken to calling it either a pig-in-a-tent or a pig-in-a-sleeping-bag.
Here are a couple of pictures; it will be interested to hear if any nohatnocattlers out there have had any experience with the kalache.
Posted by stan at 03:24 PM | Comments (2)
April 08, 2005
Friendly Skies
Posted by stan at 02:18 PM
April 07, 2005
Baseball Tickets
I figured one of the nice things about Houston was going to be the relative availibility of baseball tickets as compared to trying to get a seat at Fenway. But check out this site & click on Tickets for the 4/10 game. They appear to be selling reserved PARKING spots accross from Minute Maid Field for $45 a pop!
Posted by stan at 11:45 AM
New Orleans
I can think of no more fitting symbol of New Orleans than the garbage can. First, there are more of them per capita in New Orleans than any other city in the world I'm betting, literally one, two, or three of them on every corner; and that isn't counting the huge, full-sized dumpster they leave on Bourbon Street.
Second, and not that it isn't a fun place, but a couple nights on Bourbon Street has to be the most disgusting thing this side of running the Boston Marathon; just a never ending string of foulness and opportunities to contract hepetitis. When people gasp at the sight of someone walking down the street in sandals, well, that isn't a good sign.
The kicker on our trip was walking down Bourbon on Easter Sunday and seeing lines of people waiting for the Easter parade, in their Sunday finest, sitting on the curb with their feet in the gutter. I don't think those people realized what was flowing through that gutter about 9 hours earlier.
Posted by stan at 11:16 AM
April 06, 2005
For The Birds
The guy in the cube next to me, last mentioned when he was overheard hoping to be reincarnated as a river otter, is also quite a fan of birding. In fact, he can be overheard having phone conversations with other birding aficianados three to four times a year. Apparently it is a pretty big deal with these birdies, they go out into the wilds of east Texas armed with nothing but binoculars and their trusty bird field guides hoping to spot the most species. There are contests and bird-related prizes (birdseed? Larry Bird DVDs?)
Maybe I'm a little bit jaded from all those years in Boston where the only birds I ever saw were pidgions and seagulls, but I think this is a pretty good indication of exactly how much there is to do in Houston.
"What should we do this weekend, Sara?""I don't know, throw our binoculars in the pickup truck and walk around looking for sparrows?"
I'm also a little uncomfortable with the insistance on using the word bird as a verb, but that's another story.
Posted by stan at 03:23 PM | Comments (3)
Houston Sunrise
The things you see when you're in the office at 6AM...
Posted by stan at 12:10 AM
April 05, 2005
Oswalt
Since I'm reduced to watching Astros baseball (there's a long story as to why I am entering the first season in recent memory without the trusty MLB Extra Innings package that lets you watch all the out of market games every night), I'm wondering why Roy Oswalt insists on throwing strikes to home run hitters with bases open and the likes of Yadier Molina on deck?
As with everything else wrong in Houston, I suspect it is because of either the heat or the humidity.
Posted by stan at 08:52 PM
Bad Start
All I can say is that, the last time the Sox lost a couple of games in a row to the Yankees, they recovered enough to win the remainder of games they played in the season. So I'm thinking 160-2 will get them into the playoffs pretty easily. No need to worry.
Posted by stan at 08:47 PM
April 04, 2005
No Hat, No Cattle, No Blog
After a week and a half or so hiatus, nohatnocattle is back in business.
Posted by stan at 12:24 AM