Into the Great Wide Open

It always amazes me when I drive to work across the plains in the early morning. Sometimes, I shut off my headlights, and I drive in completely pitch black darkness for a moment. It’s creepy and I have to switch my headlights back on.

No streetlights adorn my highway. There are no roadsigns to mark any nearby towns (because there are none). There are only the occasional reflective markers to remind me that there are long driveways that lead to farmhouses somewhere set back from the road.

In the pitch blackness, families used to hitch their horses to a wagon and ride into town for supplies so they could get there by day in time to purchase goods and then drive back. What takes me less than 30 minutes used to be a whole-day affair.

The pioneer spirit.

These people left families on the East Coast.

They traveled God-knows-how-many miles of uninhabited space to get there.

And they carved a life out for themselves.

The people who survive are those who don’t care where they go. Only what they do.

Somewhere in the middle of Texas

My Public Display of Affection

I love my new PDA.

Harrison’s Internal Medicine = 10 lbs.
My new Palm TX = much much less

Master Shake: “Someone stole my PDA and I will ruin this house with my anger!”
Frylock: “Since when do you have a Personal Digital Assistant?”
Master Shake: “You didn’t get my wireless e-mail?”

Master Shake: Frylock! You can float. Go check up in the gutter for my PDA.
Frylock: Shake, why would your PDA be up in the gutter?
Master Shake: Well, that’s where your CD burner ended up, when it *decided* to stop working!

— Aqua Teen Hunger Force

The old Palm pilots had this horrible design flaw, whereby if you got stuck without being able to charge your PDA for a certain amount of time, it would then proceed to punish you for your incompetency by completely wiping all of your DKA and chemotherapy protocols, insulin regimens, fluid deficit calculators, pregnancy wheel, Epocrates, 5-Minute Consult, Neofax, Text Twist, and hard-earned attendings’ secret-pager-numbers from its memory. My new PDA is not a ditz. Thank you, Palm, for fixing your horrible design flaw.

The Pecos River

“I‘m the hootin’est, rootin’-est, tootin’-est, roughin’est, toughin’est, shootin’-'em-uppin’-est hombre this-here side of the Pecos!”

You know, when you look at the Pecos River. . . it’s pretty darn small, but, I guess, compared to Yosemite Sam, everything is large.

The Pecos River, as we passed over it the first time.

On the way home, I blinked and I missed it.

The Anchoring Dance

When
you search “sailing solo” on Google, all you get is sailing
organizations for single people. That’s frustrating. I used to wonder
why the guy I crewed for NEVER sails with his wife. She sails with her husband’s brother instead. I thought that was kinky. But now I totally understand. And it explains why they’ve been married for 14 years.

Almost
every time we sail together, Matt and I argue. We both love to sail,
but we both want to be skipper. Too many cooks in the galley.

So,
last month when we attempted to go sailing in near-25 mph winds,
because it was my only day of vacation, it failed miserably. We never
got out of port.

I came stomping home, and my neighbor lady, the
one who’s retired, looks up from her gardening. She smiles at me and
asks, “Did you guys go sailing? I saw you pulling out of the driveway
with the sailboat this morning.”

“No.” I said tersely, and went inside where I proceeded to throw an infantile temper tantrum.

Later
on, I baked some brownies and brought them over to her house. She
talked with me about how she and her boyfriend used to go sailing on
Lake Travis in Austin, and they always fought. “It’s not uncommon,” she said, with the voice of experience.

Eileen Quinn says it best: