Odds and ends

We have been walking around our neck of the woods, often seeing these gigantic acorns with a rough enclosure. The husk looks a bit like a pine cone in its roughness. They are about 3 times as large as what I am used to for an acorn (note the penny).

Finally I looked them up. This is the seed of a burr oak. It has a huge range, according to Wikipedia. It is found in the Appalachians and in central North America from Texas to Canada. It is the state tree of Iowa. If you are ever starving, it looks like a few of these would make a meal (after preparation). Not that I am any great recognizer of trees, but I thought it strange that I hadn't seen these before.

Are they "odds" or "ends"? I'm pretty sure even George Carlin doesn't know.

The house is coming along. We are trying to do any decorating slowly, with quirky things that we find. All our tchotchkes are still in Virginia, awaiting a spring run in the cheese wagon. (Cheese wagon is what our girls called our various Plymouth/Dodge/Chrysler minivans. Our cheese wagons have always done good service dragging crap around. And by crap, I don't mean our girls.)

In one corner of the living room, over the TV, I have hung up a bit of history. Whose history I have no clue. We found these Gothic arch clerestory windows in a consignment shop. I liked the shapes, so I took them home. I also liked the fact they were rough-stripped. There was still a bit of paint left, kind of lumpy and rough. I found a bit of fabric and stretched it over the back, folding it every few inches. Then I hinged the three frames together.

I kind of like the light and shadow, 3-d look with the outer windows folded forward a bit. I think the roughness and the smooth fabric also make a nice contrast.

So, taking heart from this BH (Better Half) and I completed the bedroom with a curved-side headboard and a few of my favorite black and whites taken during our travels.

We'll have a few more things to hang once the tchotchke run is done. Christmas and New Year will put things in limbo for a while.

Have an enjoyable holiday.

While we're on the subject

Verizon called ten minutes ago. "Everything might be recorded for 'quality' purposes," they said. They wanted to cement our marvelous cell phone relationship for another two years and reward me by giving me another one hundred "free" minutes. I really don't come anywhere near my minute allotment on any given month, and asked the young lady if she had actually looked at my account. She said she liked to think of the extra minutes as insurance, so I wouldn't worry about going over on minutes.

I asked if they really wanted to adjust my data plan so it wouldn't be unlimited, but the young lady told me, "No, it would be the same plan." I asked why they were doing this, as it is still about 12 months until I run out of the end of the contract. She told me "We like to do this so we can do more promotions for you. So we can give you 'free' stuff." I told her that I might be interested if they just didn't up the per minute charge when you go over, suggesting that "MAYBE YOU COULD JUST CHARGE THE SAME RATE AS THE PLAN!" I knew it wouldn't do any good (and it didn't), but wanted the drones in charge of reviewing the recordings for sentient life to know there was some out here in the hill country of Texas.

I am guessing that Verizon marketing thinks they are selling to meat puppets. I have been refusing to accept hands up my butt for years.

Why is it every time I go to Best Buy I get pissed off?

So I head to Best Buy after due diligence to buy a camera and some accessories. I carry along the following:

1. a 10 % coupon to apply to digital photo products
2. a printed Reward Zone certificate for $95 off
3. a printed Reward Zone certificate for $55 off

I do my business, hampered by a sales clerk with an attitude and a pimp walk (even though she was a young woman). She gets wrong what I asked for and supplies me with something much more expensive. She huffs when I tell her that it is wrong, voids everything and starts over. She proceeds to ring up the new sale, then hands me the receipt. I am expecting the following:

camera                             $xxx
accessory 1                         yy
accessory 2                         zz

Subtotal for the coupon     aaa
10% coupon           -0.1 x aaa

Subtotal                   0.9 x aaa
certificates                       -150

Tax
Total                        0.9 x aaa - 150 + taxes

I don't get that. I get a bizarre list of items, each of which displays

• an amount that is not the amount displayed on the store shelf
• a "sale" discount that brings it down to the store display price
• some of the tax for the sale
• some of the certificate discount for the sale, but not displaying any percentage or rule for calculating it

As a result, it was impossible to check the arithmetic. I am an old fart, and crusty shading to cranky besides. I check the work for major purchases. When the store displays its internal accounting nightmare to me rather than a simple receipt that can be checked, I get pissed off. Enough to get several more huffs out of the "sales" person and to get a manager over there who could explain the gobbledy-gook to me so that I could check it.

This kind of thing (but not the same thing) happens every time I go there. Last time the "sales" person could not explain why the Geek Squad would come to my house and "adjust" the TV after a couple months. It took a store manager to explain that every TV delivered from Japan comes adjusted for the store (that is, too bright and with too much contrast - so it will stand out against other maladjusted TVs). Apparently, despite the fact that maybe one TV in a thousand is used in the store as a display, IT NEVER OCCURRED to anyone that adjusting them all to store brightness and then wasting someones time traveling to houses all over central Texas is JUST PLAIN STUPID.

I am getting to be old enough that apoplexy could conceivably be life-threatening. I don't want to give up on interacting with the world, but I am pretty sick of talking to stupid snots with an attitude. I am self-aware enough to understand that I might be one, but I need some feedback to confirm or deny it.

Anyone?

Grandma continues to climb

The Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Garden never fails to please. Part of the enjoyment for me is the architecture. The variety of shapes is quite pleasing. Wood and stone are perfect in the dry Texas hills.

This tower provides a beautiful panorama of the gardens, but you have to climb for it.

And so she did. Way up at the tippy top you can see BH (Better Half) and Popo, her mother.

You can see where BH gets her sweet smile.

The garden at this time of year is lined with luminaries, in preparation for Luminations, a holiday celebration.

The flowers are gone now, the shrubs shedding their leaves,

the next season in progress, soaking up the sun.

The exhibit house is showing some of what is bigger in Texas, in this case, fancy birdhouses. Most of these had nests in them.

On this past weekend, artists were also selling their wares. They varied from these reimagined skulls,

to Kokopeli-like sculptures

But the natural things never fail to please, like these translucent prickly pear cacti, letting the sun show through.

Popo climbs Mt. Bonnell

Mt. Bonnell is a limestone hill on the side of the Colorado River between Austin and Lake Travis. Here nearly 85 year old Popo (Better Half's Mom) reaches the last of 102 steps up from the parking lot. That's pretty good. She has always been active.

Mt. Bonnell is a pretty park, as well, with picnic tables, old, dried juniper trees,

lovely views along the river,

and a view of where some of Austin's wealthiest families live in beautiful homes.

Fortunately for Grandma and for us, too, farther down the trail we found an easier descent to the parking lot.

Popo gets inspiration

BH's (Better Half's) Mom is here for a while. Chinese grandma's come in two varieties - Jya Po and A Po (Bower romanization - Google won't translate sounds into ideographs yet). One is mother's mother and the other is father's mother. Both are shortened to Popo for children.

So, FOD (Favorite Older Daughter) now lives in Houston. We took Popo down there to see her, since she loves her Popo dearly. We went to the Ocean Palace Restaurant to have dim sum. We had a pretty good time and got pretty much stuffed.

When we got home, Popo got the idea to make potstickers and Gow Ju. So our kitchen became a bit of a factory, with BH and Popo rolling out home-made wrappers for the potstickers, stuffing them with pork/shrimp/scallion mix, steaming, then frying them. Then the Gow Ju were made with store-bought wrappers, and steamed. Everything was enjoyed with lots of soy sauce laced with scallion and sesame oil. Yum!