Road Trippin' with Katie - 2016

Digital or Vinyl?

Last Christmas, I got the Mrs a record player. When I say The Mrs, I mean us. After 23 years, all presents, except jewelry, are joint presents. 

I can't tell you how much joy this little contraption has brought into our house. We now sit in our living room...TOGETHER...talking about music, listening to RECORDS. Now I know what you're thinking. Together? Aren't you guys always together?...Well, yes..of course, but like any married couple, we do our own things. I'm always up in my office and Kelly is tucked away somewhere reading a book, covered in hot bags of herbs. The record player brought us back to living room and its really nice.

The record player came in the  mail and I plugged it in....no fuss, no muss I got it all hooked up and when Kelly got home we marveled at the nostalgia and settled down to listen to a record.

We did it every night for the first week...and any night that we got new records in the mail.

It's fantastic. Sure we have the music on our iTunes, but there is something about a record. They only last 3 or 4 songs, then one of us inevitably, jokingly says "uggghhh, go flip the record!" or "uggghhh this record player sucks!". 

Can I tell the difference in sound between Digital and Vinyl? Is there a big difference in quality?

Nope. Don't know. Not even a clue. Can't tell. No idea.

What I do know is that I like sitting in the living room with my wife...listening to records.

Rise and Shine

At 8am this morning I was on the phone with my father....I walked into my bedroom and discovered my wife still in bed, apparently abusing the snooze function on her alarm and making herself late for work in the process.

I asked my father to hold on for a second, leaned over my wife and said "rise and shine".

Then it happened.

I was holding the phone down by my leg but I could hear it....the morning nightmare from my youth...my father was singing at the top of his lungs:

"Rise and shine

And give God the glory, glory

Rise and shine

And give God the glory, glory

Rise and shine

And give God the glory, glory

Children of the Lord"

I am a morning person....now....but when I was a kid, I hated getting out of bed. My father would come upstairs, turn the lights on, pull the sheets off the bed all while singing that damn song, every verse, as loud as he could...clapping and dancing like a crazy person. My brother and I had awoken in Hell and my father was a demon from whichever circle it is that they torture children.

"The Lord said to Noah: there's gonna be a floody, floody

The Lord said to Noah: there's gonna be a floody, floody

Get those children out of the muddy, muddy

Children of the Lord"

So this morning, when I heard him singing it again, it sent shivers down my spine.....then I put him on speaker phone.

My wife was up and on her feet before he finished the second verse. Apparently her mom had used the same technique.

Now of course, I was actually thrilled to hear my father singing, as he is in a nursing home and can get depressed from time to time,....but over the course of the rest of our morning call, he burst out into that song at least four more times. I finally had to ask him to stop.

He said ok....and sang it again.

Kid Life

Kids on my street frequently play right outside my house and , as I am the only house with a basketball net, they play basketball in my driveway. Today they decided to throw footballs from across the street and try to hit baskets. Instead of hitting baskets, they were peppering my house (and truck) with 30-40 yd bombs....and it sounded like bombs.

I was gonna go out there and tell them to stop before they break a window or dent my truck, then I thought back to my youth. I remember making up new games which were only limited by how many kids we had and what miscellaneous sporting equipment was laying about. Baseball bat and volleyball? VolleyBat, no problem. Wiffleball bat, skateboards and a softball? Street polo. What fun we used to have......we annoyed the hell out of all of our neighbors.

Instead of telling them stop, I went outside and said "Ok, what are the rules here?" They were ecstatic to explain them to me. You have to stay on the driveway across the street and if you hit a tree someone gets to punch you etc etc etc. I watched for a while, then I went back inside.

As I was typing this the 13 year old from across the street threw a football 35 yds directly into my basketball net......swish....nothing but net. Watched it from the window. Unbelievable.

The neighborhood kids went bananas.

New Life...Texas Style

Ok.....so...since we moved back to the good ol' U. S. of A. 2 years ago, we have been neglecting the blog. (clearly).

It seemed more important, and easier, to blog when we were galavanting around the world. Our day-to-day grind here seems not only less interesting but uneventful. That being said, we have a great life here.

Truly.

I have my dream job...teaching little munchkins how to play lacrosse...

Including my two future lacrosse superstar nephews

We got a house and finally got it furnished.

 We get to have my brother's kids over as often as we like....just like the old days.

..and the Mrs. and I get to do all sorts of new, fun stuff....with a Texas twist.

Like, BBQ Gospel Sunday Brunch in Austin

Four Wheeling at our friends farm in Brenham

Midget Wrestling...yes MIDGET WRESTLING!

Go shopping for Texas-y stuff

 Celebrate American Football season again...

 Wear cowboy boots

Plant a garden

Help friends set coyote traps

Sit around on the couch, watch TV, eat and drink

Remember why we hate football season

Go to concerts

More shopping...Texas style

Feed the cows

...and burn shit!

Life in Texas is fun...and we have a lot more of it to explore.

We WILL be updating the blog more often...hopefully regularly...stay tuned.

Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel

Have you ever seen 1.5 million bats take flight?

I have.  

It happens around dusk in downtown Austin.  From March through October, as the sun sets behind us, they come streaming out from under the Congress Avenue Bridge.

If you sit under the bridge to watch you might get the occasional little sprinkle of guano on you.

Considered yourself warned.

And it goes on pretty consistently like this for like 15 to 20 minutes.  Squeaking, wheeling columns of bats just pouring out. Great big clouds of massed bats, heading off in an easterly direction, as far as the eye can see. Though our photos and videos hardly do it justice, you gotta trust me, it's jaw dropping y'all.

-k.

Out Texasing the Texans

Enjoy where you're at.  The secret to a lifetime of happiness?  Can't say, really.  But a personal motto, at any rate.  And I do tend to land sunny-side-up.  So I'm in Texas for nearly four months now and I am doing anything Texan that comes my way and having a blast.  Since January I have...

Gone to the Monster Truck show and loved every second of it.  I thought we were just going on a lark.  I was fully prepared to enjoy it ironically, ya know?  Like watching the local yocals and feeling superior.  But you know what?  When the lights went down and the engines revved and I got an eyeful of El Toro Loco, Madusa and the legendary Gravedigger I went as nuts as any other redneck there.  The noxious exhaust fumes, the deafening noise, the sinus-clogging clouds of dirt, the roar of the crowd - all I can say is don't knock it till you try it.

I'm also eating TexMex every chance I get.  

Any eatery where the wait staff approaches with complimentary chips and salsa

 and the sing-song suggestion "How 'bout some margaritas for y'all today?" is alright in my book.

And when the sit-down and order option ain't a possibility, a tamale will do.  

You can find one of these on every other street corner.

We've made it over to Austin a couple times so far.  

Saw Junior Brown playing his self-made double-necked steel / slide guitar hybrid thingy.  Legend.

Made it to a couple other shows at Austin's Continental Club which is currently in the running to become my favorite place ever.   Their regular run-of-the-mill weekly roster reads like a Who's Who of the alt-country music scene.  I expect to be back as often as possible and was delighted to discover there's a Continental Club in Houston too.  Yeehaw!

Other Texas activities included...

...gawking at the Alamo in San Antonio....

...and shopping the jerky counter at a roadside rest stop.  But that ain't all...

I been to the Houston Livestock show where I saw firsthand the difference between a longhorn...

...and a brahman bull  (many thanks to Brett's mom for all answering all my city mouse questions.  The Livestock Show was an amazing experience that methinks will eventually get its very own blog post.)

As if a day at the Houston Livestock show wasn't enough Texas fun, it was followed by the rodeo.  The RODEO y'all!  The rodeo was followed by a Sugarland concert.  I don't mind telling you folks I was feeling country strong AND Texas proud that day.

But by far the highlight of my "When in Rome do as the Texans do" quest has been a day at Brett's family farm.  We tore it up on four wheelers, gorged on bbq, gathered 'round a mini bonfire and just generally had some good ol' Texas fun.  Jim, Sue, Mandy and Jolie were excellent hosts and it was amazing to get some time with old friends Brett, Monica, their little darlin' Brayden and some of Brett's old Texas buddies.

Brett's niece let me ride her horse.  I'm not sure if the photo does justice to my barely suppressed panic but all I can say is I'm not a natural.  While Jolie clearly is and has the boots to prove it.  

(I covet those pink cowboy boots.)

Show off.

Other ranch activities included feeding the cows treats by hand...

...and helping a lil' calf get her nutrition with Sue and Jolie.  But the real country fun started when a bunch of us headed out onto the property's makeshift gun range.  I'm not a firearm fan in general, but I felt like Annie Goshdarn Oakley.  Shooting with people who are safe and responsible gun owners, who know the ins and outs of their favorite toys and how enjoy sharing it with a pacifist city mouse like me was a treat I don't expect to experience very often.  Texas...what's not to love?

And I do not mind admitting that I felt like one bad-ass chick that day.  Shooting is fun!  Turns out I'm not half bad at it either.  I say again, yee haw.

Here's a pile o' guns on offer at The Farm.  It started with about four pistols but every time I turned around someone was bringing out something new to shoot. Chris was in heaven.

Above a selection of shells and bullets gathered from the range after we were through.  Don't mess with Texas, I'm just saying.  We will SHOOT YOUR ASS!

So it's looking like we'll be staying in Houston for a while and I suspect that the fun will not stop.  I'm hoping to add more Texan treats to my stable of adventures.  There's a place downtown called the Armadillo Palace that looks promising, so stay tuned cowboys.

-k.

Monster Truck Jam!

There are a few things you don't get a chance to do when living in Europe....but now we live in Texas.

When our friend Kyle suggested we all go to the Monster Truck Show, we said he must certainly be joking.

He was not......and we went....and it was freakin awesome!

We had a blast! It was loud...and there were giant trucks jumping over stuff!

I can't believe how much we enjoyed it...I guess when you are sitting with 25,000 other people you can pretty much enjoy anything...but Monster Trucks are cool.

above, the crowd favorite "Gravedigger"

We all picked our favorites. Kelly's was "El Toro Loco" because he had horns on his truck.

After a few rounds of 1 on 1 races around a course, they got into the freestyle competition which was the real fun. Every time someone rolled their truck or flipped over the place went NUTS!

It was a great evening indeed.

below, Kelly and Kyle

Yeeeeeeee Hawwwwwwww  !