More Meat Snacks...

When I first came across the various texts on the meat snack package I could not resist the obvious jokes and even created a t-shirt iron-on with the most suggestive line. I'm going to have to work out a bit more before I can wear the shirt out in good conscience, but it still gives me jollies as I try to come up with a non-personal use for the 3.65 ounces of meat snack in a bag.

The company did eventually write me back (from the cold north woods of Wisconsin). The disclaimer about personal use simply means that I cannot export the meat snack and sell it.

3.65 oz of meat snack costs $5.99 at the store next to my office.

I had no idea that meat snacks were so in demand around the world that I could make a profit by buying, shipping, and re-selling the meat snack in foreign lands.

Here we lavish one another with gifts of gold: there they come bearing meat snacks.

Hopeful Male: Darling, you are the most precious creation in my eye. I brought you these.

Blushing Female: Ohhhhhh...Meat Snacks...you shouldn't have.

And just like here - she REALLY meant it.

The Big Four Ohhhhhhh!

For the last few months, as this milestone age has approached, I've felt the need to reflect, ponder, muse, and cogitate on the lessons I've learned. For a few years, I would add a lesson a year to a list I had going and I included this list to younger friends in a birthday letter of wisdom. I long lost that letter and decided that simply surviving another year did not in itself mean one had accumulated additional great wisdom.

Some years, in fact, were so blase' that I don't even remember them - the twenties for instance.

One observation I have made, though as I approached forty with excitement rather than dread, was that life really just gets better. In my twenties I discovered just how miserable the teenage years were. I mourn for the many people who look back on high school as "the best years of my life." If you climaxed by eighteen, then you have lived one miserable life.

My twenties were a dramatic improvement to the teens, but with ten years distance between the present and then, I could never go back to that time. I grew very much as a person through my twenties, but those years continued to be a struggle for identity as I created myself professionally.

The thirties, though, I romanticize. I matured professionally and actually reached positions I had never originally aspired to. I also finally reached a personal maturity as I finally accepted myself as a gay man. The decision to accept myself for who I am, is by far the best decision I ever made. It gave me personal freedom to be me without the constant paranoia of looking over my shoulder to see who might accidentally see something in me which was the truth I kept attempting to hide.

The progression of quality of life from decade to decade has been so good, that I am now looking forward to my forties. I'm ready to be there and to see the life I have to live in the next ten years. I'll have to be ever vigilant of my health. I have no guarantee that an aging body will fight the disease as well as my younger body, but I'm going to give it all the tools it needs to fight well.

And I'm already looking forward to botox treatments to keep the crows feet around my eyes at bay, but hey, science is good and gives us such gifts! Who knows what will be around by the time I turn fifty!!

Music Review: Scissor Sisters - Ta-Dah

Saturday I bought the new Scissor Sisters cd after only hearing the first release, "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'" which is one of the most misleading titles in music history. One song was enough for me as I had fallen for the group with their first big song, "Filthy Gorgeous."

Ta-Dah proves to be a successful sophomore outing for the group. The thirteen songs on the (iTunes) album span a range of influences from early Elton John to the Statler Brothers. In between I hear bits of Blondie, The Bee Gees and some Queen.

The first release, "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'" makes one sway, tap one's feet,or just stand up and really move. I'm anticipating some of the club releases to hit the stands soon. Contrary to it's negative title, the song is upbeat and positive. Despite all the reasons not to dance, the rhythm dictates otherwise.

"Land of a Thousand Words" and "Lights" are the two songs I just like listening to. "Lights," especially, has an upbeat rhythm that makes me want to dance, but both songs have layers to the lyrics that come clean with each listen.

My favorite song on the cd is "I Can't Decide" because I'm in a good mood after hearing it. It has a definite Statler Brothers feel to it with a saloon-piano/organ in the background. And while the singer trys to decide whether the antagonist should live or die, I keep envisioning a Keystone Cops scenario playing in the background. With lines like "flys were cats you'd be a litter," and "It's a bitch convincing people to like you" the song can't be taken as too serious a threat.

I've listened to the cd steadily for three days now and continue to enjoy it. The more closely I listen to it, the more I discover in the clever writing. Cleverness and energy are the greatest strenghts to the Scissor Sisters. I would like to see a live show to see if the energy translates into the live performance or if the energy comes from production.

All in all the entire cd is enjoyable. It has not been around long enough to make it to my top ten list and I doubt it will, but for the fun the songs provide, it is definitely worth adding to your collection.

Artsy or too lazy to cut and paste?

In getting ready for my upcoming birthday party, I decided it was necessary to finish decorating the walls to my house. Luckily one of the craft stores was having a big sale on frames, so I bought some big frames to get the various posters and prints I had already purchased finally up on the walls. While I was out and about, I went to one of my favorite discount stores (no, much more discount than Wal-Mart). and bought a number of picture frames. I cleaned the store out of silver frames and came home and started printing pictures.

I am not one of your really big crafty persons, but I did learn how to use the editing feature on my photo editor to make some of my landscape pictures black and white. I guess a bit of Ansel Adams (http://www.anseladams.com) haunts me when it comes to landscapes and I have always preferred black and white to color. I have a collection of snow photos I took a few years ago and since they are essentially devoid of color, I decided they have alway been best that way.

After hours of selecting, editing, printing and framing pictures, I found I had one frame left and decided it would be best with a collage of snow photos. I found some of my pictures of flowers in the snow - flowers are normal in south Texas in the winter, snow is not, so I found many examples of tropical flowers - hibiscus, azalea, and lantana blooming while covered with snow. My photo editing program would not let me make a collage of them, but I decided it had to be done on the computer - scissors, tape and glue were way too 1990's - and if you remember, I don't even have one of those cute birthday calendars on paper - it had to be on a spreadsheet.

Finally after a bit of searching, I found a freeware program (courtesy of the ubiquitous search engine that with a certain software company will together rule the world) that would do collages. With a bit of manipulation, I managed to create the collage above. It looks better on here than printed, but...I'll go with it for the time being.

And though I was too lazy to print the pictures and cut them out - now I'm going to have to cut out the picture to make it fit the frame. I guess scissors, tape, and glue are still part of the collage world.

Sometimes I Amaze...

...Even Myself

Somehow, I managed to relax today and in the afternoon decided to cook. It has been a while since I last had pizza, so that is what I began to crave. I have made my own bread for the last, I guess eight years now, so a pizza crust is nothing, but the topping can be a little tricky. I searched the kitchen and decided I wanted a spinich pizza which worked because I had frozen spinich in the freezer and all the fresh basil and oregano and rosemary growing in the garden. I have enough of the herbs growing at this point that I could have had a purely herb pizza if I wanted. Basil grows like crazy in the right soil and environment as does the oregano. The rosemary is practically a native plant around here - it is fantastic for the xeroscaping in the dry central Texas rocky soil. Also as people in the suburbs know very well - deer don't eat rosemary.

After chopping and mixing for a little while - with some added fresh onion and garlic and then the parmesan cheese grated and mixed in, the aromas began to take over the kitchen and I was not certain I would make it to the actual baking of the pizza.

By the time the topping was complete, the dough was ready to be worked into pizza shape. I had preheated the stone, so the dough would start rising as soon as I put it down and I could form a nice bowl to hold the sauce and melting cheeses. It worked beautifully and soon the nice round crust was piled with fragrant herbs, cheeses, and spinich.

After rising another thirty minutes it was ready to bake and that just made the anticipation worse as I could smell every bit of it's goodness fill the house. About the time it was done, I turned on the broiler and set the pizza under it for the last few minutes

I LOOK LIKE THAT????

I think it is is time to find a good cosmetic surgeon. I tried three different photos before I went with this one and none of the three ever brought up Lance Armstrong, and Lance is the guy I'm always being told I look like. I guess you have to be in Austin to truly appreciate that.

I just know I'm going to be googling some of these names - especially Mr. Redondo!

Reason # 2 W hy I Love Austin...

God loves live music!

He really must. Tonight on day three of the Austin City Limits Music Festival, thunderstorms were building to the west as a hurricane which hit the west coast of Mexcio and a cold front were merging and stirring up all kinds of fun.

As we watched the clouds approach it started to lightning to the east of us. Then it started to lightning to the west of us. But it never started to lightning over us and with only one pause for a downpour, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers showed why they were the headliners and closing act for ACL Fest. #5.

A Sermon to Ponder

Two months ago my pastor preached a sermon about the rejection of Jesus as the Christ in his home town. The people there could not see beyond the man they watched grow up. They could only see him as "the carpenter."

And that made me ask the question - "Did Jesus ever build a wobbly table for someone?" If He cut a board the wrong length, did He just say, "Fit!" and everything was good.

Today the lesson looked at a passage of scripture where Jesus responded with racist terms to a gentile woman who came to Him to heal her daughter. Perhaps, the response was to test the woman's faith. Perhaps the response was Jesus's humanity showing through His divinity. Whatever the interpretation of the response, it leads to an examination of one's personal Christology. Because the Bible teaches that Jesus was both man and God, there is the possibility that as a person, Christ was influenced by the society around him.

And that has had me pondering the question: if Christ, as a man, could be influenced by the society around Him, how much more so are we?

As an educator, though I am no longer at the campus level, I constantly consider the effect the decisions I make has on the staff and students of the 29 campuses I with which I work. When I make a decision, it creates a certain response from the people who work on the campus which leads to a reaction by the students.

At the campus level a certain environment develops. In some ways, each campus has it's own culture which evolves over time. Through systems theory, one can understand how changes take place and that the influence of certain key people can determine the entire climate that surrounds a place, just like the gravity of a celestial body determines the atmosphere which surrounds its mass.

I would be deluding myself to think that every move I made affected the effectiveness of each campus, but then again, with systems theory: a butterfly flaps its wings in a rain forest and a hurricane strikes the Caribbean. Given that understanding, I do consider the ramifications of all my actions on the 40,000 students.

No wonder I suck at relaxing.

I SUCK...

...at relaxing.

I took a vacation day to have a four day weekend, but by noon, I was frantically worrying about the meeting I have scheduled for tomorrow morning. I worried so much, I was getting sick to my stomach.

I tried taking a bath and decided I would scoop out the water into a bucket to water some of the plants in my garden (surely the phosphates in the soap would be good for them) but then it started raining.

I have been gone for three days and my dogs didn't make too much of a mess. I was very proud of them. Today, for some reason, two of them pooped on the carpet.

I thank you for your kind attention to my whining. I'll go work on my powerpoint for the training I'm doing Friday.

A Day Off

Ahhhhh.....so nice to have a day off.

I have a hard time relaxing - I've already made a list of things to do. I'm resisting. We'll see how it goes.