Obligatory September Post

I didn't want to let September slip by without posting SOMETHING.

I'm back at work, post-myocardial infarction, and I've completed my ECP therapy (it's weird - you can google it).

October will be a busy month, what with us moving into the new house and selling the old house. Hopefully, I'll have a little time to blog, and happier topics about which to write.

Lastly, I accidently saw "Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle" and laughed my ass off. Someone should have told me! And I've been a White Castle fan for about 30 yrs so the premise of the movie is completely believable.

Until next time, if we're interpreting the Mayan calendar correctly.

Big S Ranch

So THAT'S What a Heart Attack Feels Like

My week's schedule was "overtaken by events" on Wednesday morning when I had what the doctors are calling a "massive heart attack". The short version is that I left the hospital this morning, with no complications and full recovery in sight.

Wednesday started normally. I got to the office at 7:30 am. I was the first one in, so I turned on the lights and started coffee. At 9:00 am I went into the CEO's office for a conference call with Europe, which ran until about 10:00.

Around 10:15 I left the office to go to the offices of one of our members. We were having a 4-hour "pre-meeting meeting" to review some PIDX presentations.

I parked my truck and began walking across the lot to the door when I broke out in a cold sweat. By the time I got to the front desk, my chest was burning so I sat down. A co-worker who was attending the same meeting signed me in and got my vistor badge. After a couple of minutes we went up to the meeting.

I asked the guy hosting the meeting if they had any antiacid, thinking the burn was an ulcer. The antiacid didn't help and the pain got worse, so we went back to the lobby. The company policy was to call an ambulance for anyone complaining of chest pain. The ambulance showed up in about 10 minutes.

I ended up at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital 10 minutes later. After a quick look in Emergency, they rolled me up to Cath Lab #4, where Dr. Chang performed an angioplasty on my left main coronary artery and inserted a stent to keep it open. The pain went away immediately.

After a couple of days of observation, I'm home again. My heart attack was caused by a 100% blockage of the left main artery. Luckily, my other arteries are clean or I would have likely dropped dead from this type of blockage. I have about 40% damage to my heart, but the doctor thinks most or all of that will come back, since they got to me so quickly.

The two pics below show a "before" and "after" view. Notice that you don't seen any arteries in the white circle of the top pic. That's due to the blockage stopping the bloodflow. The 2nd pic, taken after the stent was installed, shows what the bloodflow is supposed to look like.

All in all, I would have rather gone to the meeting.

Big S Ranch

Because You TOTALLY Want To See Me on "Mad Men"

So I did it.
I submitted my photo to the Mad Men Casting Call contest sponsored by Banana Republic.
The winner gets a walk-on appearance on an episode of Mad Men, the best TV show EVER.

Hopefully the winner won't have to sleep with Matt Weiner to get the gig.

About 1200 entries so far, and contest goes until August 11. So, the odds are against me.
You can help by going here EVERY DAY and giving me 5 stars:

http://madmencastingcall.amctv.com/photos/view/1347/sort:Photo.created

And you KNOW they will be so impressed with my as-of-yet-untapped acting skills that my walk-on role will become permanent. You just KNOW it. Because it happens every day.

You knew me before I was famous,
Big S Ranch

We Are Family

[Today is Connor's 9th Birthday. Thought I'd better get last weekend put to rest before the party starts this weekend.. Big S Ranch.]

Thanks to my brother Richard, we had a family reunion in Independence, Missouri, over the 4th of July weekend. It had been years, decades, since we'd had such a reunion.

As my brother so eloquently put it, it was good to get the family together without having a dead body slabbed out on the table. (We usually see each other only at funerals, it seems).

Attendance was good. We had folks from 5 different states show up (Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Texas). Mostly, it was my mom's family and my Uncle Bob's family who made it. It was such a good time, we're planning to do it again next year. It will give us 12 months to "guilt" the no-shows into attending!

And, as a bonus, we're building our family e-mail and Facebook lists so we can keep in closer touch. None of us are getting any younger, and we need to get the kids and grandkids together so they know what a cool family they're part of.

We took quite a few photos. I thought about doing a TMZ-type "Memba Them - All Growed Up" bit, but realized I'd have to include my own, so I just let that thought go.


For those of you who couldn't make it this year (and you know who you are!), expect twelve long months of guilt and shame to be heaped on you from the rest of us. Redemption can only be achieved by attending NEXT year's reunion.


Here are some of my favorite pictures from the Stukes - Todd shindig:


This should be our reunion theme pic! Katie is Speak No Evil, Susan is See No Evil, and Patricia is Hear No Evil. Just monkeying around!

That's me in the middle, with my cousins Katie and Rob. Rob and Patricia drove in from Bowling Green, KY. Katie and Dave have been back from San Diego for a few years now.

The next generations. Richard's boy Alex, my son Connor, and Jameson's little guy Kyle (my grandson!)



L to R: Tommy's wife, Jenny; cousin Rob; brother Richard; nephew Tommy; me; son Jameson. Quite the motley crew.

Nephew Tommy and his wife, Jenny. Mr & Mrs Big S Ranch seated. We're old. Give us a break.

And finally... me with Aunt Tootie. Aunt Tootie is Aunt Phyllis' sister. Aunt Phyllis was my Uncle Bob's wife. Uncle Bob was my mom's little brother.

Enjoy your family, even if they're not as cool as mine :)

Big S Ranch

The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Men Often Go Awry

Another blog post from Mexico City.


This was supposed to be a quick trip - fly down Wednesday morning, fly home Thursday afternoon. That changed before I even checked into the hotel.


In our Wednesday meeting with SAT, the Mexican tax authority, it was decided that I would stay for an SAT technical workshop on the construction of facturas electrónicas, the XML tax documents that will be implemented with our PEMEX e-commerce integration.



Unfortunately, that workshop ran until 7pm tonight, so I'm flying home tomorrow (Saturday) on the 6:50 am flight. That also means I have to leave the hotel at 5 am. This will be a short post.


In a nutshell, the trip has been fine. I didn't learn much new in the workshop, but I confirmed what I thought I knew. And the meeting was in far south Mexico City, a part of town I'd not seen before. So I've got that going for me.


That really pointy peak way far away in the middle of this picture? That is a dormant volcano. With my luck, I don't need to be getting close to that sucker.



This was lunch today, just before the workshop. An American eating lunch in a Japanese restaurant in Mexico is just... wrong.

Well, time to catch a couple of zzzz's before it is time to leave for the airport. 5:00 am will be here soon.

Maybe the next post will NOT be from Mexico City.
Big S Ranch

La Venganza de Moctezuma

My latest trip to Mexico City is one that I won't forget.

The trip itself went well. I was able to schedule the necessary meetings with the necessary people. I accomplished, from a business perspective, everything I wanted to accomplish.

There were some minor inconveniences:

• Upon arrival at the Benito Juarez Airport, I had to complete a short 'health form' in immigration. This is part of the H1N1 flu containment.
• On my way back home, I had my temperature scanned before I was allowed to board the plan.
• In between, the hotel was running about 1/3 staff, will all the restaurants closed, so we were forced to seek sustenance outside of the hotel.

Eating outside the hotel made my trip memorable for a couple of reasons.

The entire Memorial Day weekend, I suffered from that old ailment known as Montezuma's Revenge. After two years and 20+ trips to Mexico, it was my first encounter with the great Montezuma. It was brutal.

I'm not sure where I picked up the bug, but it could have been at the Sanborn's restaurant.

Or it could have been this other restaurant which gave me the second reason to remember this trip. My Mexican associates introduced me to escamoles. These are ant eggs, cooked in butter, that you eat on a tortilla as an appetizer. They were extremely good, but may also be responsible for my Memorial Day malady.

In any event, I better heal up quickly because I have to go back to Mexico City next week. At least now I have a good excuse to drink beer with dinner. And no mas escamoles.

Until next time, Montezuma willing,

Big S Ranch

Hillbilly Cred

As I mentioned in a recent tweet, when I was growing up in rural Missouri, I had two friends whose parents made moonshine (they actually called it white lightning, but it was still 190 proof alcohol).

I thought about that after listening to Kenny Chesney's song, "Back Where I Come From". He hit on several things I did in my youth, but there are many more that he did not. So I started thinking about all the stuff that gives me my "hillbilly cred", stuff that seemed quite normal at the time, but seems very strange today.

Here is my (very incomplete) list:

Homestyle
I went to 1st grade in a 3-room stone schoolhouse in West Line, Missouri (Pop. 89), just up the road from Luther's, a combination liquor store, grocery, and post office. The owner, Luther Arnold, was also the mayor, the postmaster, and the schoolbus driver.

I lived for a time in a house with no indoor toilet. We had running water, but the outhouse was a necessity. I also lived in a single-wide trailer (wheels still on) that was parked in a pasture on my grandparents' farm.

We never had A/C, either at home or in a car. Window fans kept it tolerable in the house, and the infamous "4-60" cooling method was used in the car (4 windows down at 60 mph).

I got my first rifle, a single-shot .22, when I was 8 years old. I once accidently fired that rifle in the house while cleaning it. My grandparents never figured out how that hole got in the TV cabinet :)

The one phrase we all dreaded hearing: "Cows are out". This usually happened at night and was the "all hands on deck" signal.

Recreation
Coonhunting. This took place in the winter, from about 10pm to 2am. In the cold and the dark, we'd follow the sounds of our dogs over plowed fields, across creeks, and through underbrush. The raccoons we brought back were skinned and the hides sold for around $25 each.

Seine fishing. The seine net had a 4-ft pole on each end, weights on the bottom of the net, and floats on the top. There would be a kid holding each pole on opposite banks of the creek. We'd walk upstream, dragging the net through the water. Since it would frequently snag on rocks, etc., I would often be the 'snag boy' who had to wade out and unsnag the net.

Camping. From about age 9 or 10, I would often trudge off to the woods in the 'back 40', alone, with a hatchet, cane pole, and rifle. I'd build a little lean-to, get some firewood, and either do a little fishing or hunting for my dinner. If that failed, I'd cook up some crawdads I grabbed from the creek. I wasn't a survivalist by any means, but I could get along for several days with minimal supplies.

Diet
Some of the things I've eaten can't even be found in a Fiesta grocery store in Houston:
Rabbit, squirrel, possum, raccoon, and bullfrog
Gooseberries, wild mushrooms, wild greens (various)
Calf brains, goat, beef tongue (nothing better than a tongue sandwich!)
I'll stop now... I'm getting hungry.

We also had our local legends. A black panther and a Mo-Mo (Missouri Monster, our own Bigfoot) were both rumored to live back up in the Amarugia Hills (we called the hills "the Amaroogies"). I actually heard the panther scream, although it may have been a bobcat or screech owl.

No banjos or canoe trips that I remember, but plenty of hillbilly cred, just the same.

Oh, and that's me at age 6 in the lower right corner of the photo above.

Time to go tie up the coondogs,

Big S Ranch

And I Looked, and Behold a Pale Horse

You would have thought there was enough to keep us up at night, what with the financial crisis, trillion dollar budget deficits, and a couple of wars going on. Here in Katy, TX, we can add a few things to the list.



Most recently, we received a whole buttload of rain last night (7 - 9 inches in 24 hours). That wreaked havoc with rush hour traffic last night and this morning. My big ol' truck can make it through the water, but the little stalled cars in front of me pose a larger problem. This morning I avoided Mason Rd, had to turn around halfway up Westgreen, and finally drove around a couple of stalls on Fry Rd before I finally made it to the Katy Freeway. And we're expecting rain the rest of the week.



Add to that the current panic over la influenza porcina. I just got back from Mexico City on April 17. So far no symptoms, so hopefully I'm free and clear. I'm scheduled to go back to Mexico City on May 6, but we'll wait and see. They closed all the restaurants in Mexico City today, so if that remains the case, the trip will be impossible.



Just to top it off, Mexico City had an earthquake this week. Luckily, it was centered about 150 miles away from the city. Also, luckily, most any building in Mexico City that could have fallen down, already did so during the 1985 quake. Still, it makes me a little nervous about being in one of those highrise hotels, OR being in the PEMEX tower for meetings.

At least it isn't hurricane season. THAT doesn't start for a little over a month. Not sure when the locusts are supposed to arrive.

Until the other three horsemen get here,
Big S Ranch

Everything Old is New Again

After a little bit of sleuthing on the interwebs, I found that the builder of our current home is still in business, under the same name, in Houston. This is becoming rare in the homebuilding biz.

Not only are they in business, but they are still building our same floorplan, ten years later.

This is a plus for us in our efforts to sell This Old House, since it means our floorplan is not some formerly-trendy, outdated plan, but a real classic. It is sort of the same reason that VW Beetles and Ford trucks held their resale value for so long... not much changed from year to year.

And it speaks to the builder's quality, as did the Hurricane Ike aftermath last year. In our general neighborhood, there are several homes priced lower than ours. They are built by a company called KB Homes. After Hurricane Ike last year, there were quite a few houses that sported blue tarps on their roofs. Every single one was a KB Home. It could be coincidence, or it could say something about the quality of those less expensive homes.

Next week we meet with the construction manager at the new neighborhood. The week after that, they scrape the lot and start pouring the foundation. 77 days later, we should be moving in - ready or not!

It is going to be an interesting summer...

¡El miércoles feliz a todos!

Big S Ranch

Where is President Barack Hussein Obama?

Why, he's here in Mexico City with me! Or he will be Thursday morning.

According to my local sources, he's staying at the Presidente InterContinental in the Polanco district, where rooms go for $300 to $1,000 a night (USD). His posse is taking up 3 full floors.

I can't wait to see what his visit will do to traffic here. I've seen how they "plowed the road" for the US ambassador, Antonio Garza, last year. It isn't pretty if you happen to be trying to get somewhere.

This is not a good time of year to be in Mexico City. April and May are the hottest months of the year, and the only time when temperatures are not in the 70's. The rainy season has not started, so the smog is oppressive (See the photo above - can you see the mountains? No?)

This is a rather long trip for me.... Tuesday thru Friday. It has been a fruitful trip so far. It looks like my two-year project down here is finally going to complete this summer. That is good, because Colombia and Kuwait are waiting in the wings.

Tomorrow's schedule is still up in the air. I will either be (a) here, (b) in Villahermosa, or (c) in Veracruz. Still trying to line up my meetings.

I'm hopeful that we can wrap up our Friday meetings early and get the heck out of here around noon. Looking forward to getting back home.

Hasta que próximo tiempo, lo mantenga en el suelo y girar a la derecha...
Big S Ranch

America's Pastime

I always look forward to the start of baseball season.

The first professional game I watched on TV was a Kansas City A's game back in 1966 or 1967. The A's weren't much good, and were a year or so away from moving on to Oakland. Still, it looked like a fun way to make a living.

The first game I saw in person was on my birthday, July 23, 1972, at old Municipal Stadium, 22nd & Brooklyn, in Kansas City. The Royals lost to the Orioles, 8-4. Sitting in the upper deck on down the left field line in that old stadium was a real treat. It was the one and only time I went to a game in that park.

When I was in college, we would hit a couple of games at Royals Stadium, sitting in the sun in the right field general admission, paying more attention to the girls than to the game.

And once, in 1986, I wanted to go to a Royals game to see Cookie Rojas and Amos Otis inducted into the Royals Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, it was a day I was tasked with watching the two kids, then 4 yrs and 1 yr old. I loaded up the kids, went to the ballpark, and bought tickets in the nosebleed section. I did see the induction ceremony, but I don't remember much of the game. I spent the entire time trying to keep Jameson from doing a swan dive off the upper deck.

Fast forward to 1988... We had moved to Houston the year before, and had seen a couple of games at the Astrodome. This time, I watched Nolan Ryan get his 4500th career strikeout. Another treat.

While we lived in Round Rock, the Astros started a AA minor league team there... the Round Rock Express. One year we had season tickets, right behind 1st base. The Dell Diamond is a great place to watch baseball. One particular game, though, Mrs. Big S Ranch was holding our then-1yr old, Connor, when a line drive foul came screaming our way. It would have hit Connor in the head, had Mom's hand not been in the way. The team owner, Reid Ryan (Nolan's son), came running down in about 30 seconds. No broken bones, but Mom had an awesome bruise for a long time. The Express let us move our seats to behind home plate for the rest of the season.

Now we've been back in Houston a few years and go to Minute Maid Park (aka The Juice Box) a couple of times a year. These days, every game is on TV as well, so I keep pretty close tabs on the 'Stros. [The picture above is Astro's rightfielder, Hunter Pence. I took that photo last year.]

As always, I'll be hoping for an Astros-Royals World Series this year. And as always, I'll probably not get my wish. Still, I'd rather watch baseball (in person or on TV) than any other sport. As they say, what can be more difficult than hitting a round ball with a round bat and hit it squarely?

Take me out to the ballgame, please!
Big S Ranch

The One Where The House Is Up For Sale

There isn't a "convenient" way to do this.

Back in the olden days, I used to think it was difficult moving from one rented abode (be it apartment or house) into another. Leases never expired at the right times, so you always had to beg the landlord to let you extend a month or two (or pay to leave early).

Well, that was nothing.

When you own a home, and you wish to own a DIFFERENT home, there are options, but none of them are convenient. You can:

1. Buy the new house and rent the old one (requires money and desire to be a landlord).
2. Buy the new house, then hope the old one sells (requires gobs of money for two mortgages).
3. Sell the old house, move to a rental, then buy the new house (requires moving twice).
4. Sell the old house the exact day you buy the new house (yeah, right).

Options 1 and 2 are not options for us, so we are planning on option 3, which is painful, but affordable (and likely). We actually pulled off option 4 ten years ago, and that was almost as stressful as any of the others.

To pull off the first part of option 3, we have put our old house up for sale. This means we are at the mercy of realtors. This also means we really don't "live" in our house anymore. When your house is "listed", you must be prepared to vacate at any time for a "showing" to a potential buyer. This can cramp your style in a variety of ways.

Dogs

Sorry, puppies, but you are smelly and must stay in the back yard. And we must put up a sign SAYING that you are staying the back yard so you don't lick anybody to death.

Food

Easy on the tasty (but smelly) ethnic foods and NO weirdness like liver & onions, please.

Pants

You must always, ALWAYS, wear pants. This cannot be stressed enough. Especially to our eight year old.

Mechanical Repairs On The Truck/Tractor/Car

Just don't.

All of this to sell our house. But not too soon... or too late... or for too little money...

Yikes. Where did I put the Tums.

Signing out fer now,

Big S Ranch

Nueva Casa

I swore I'd never do this again. After we built The Fortress in Round Rock about 10 years ago, I said never again. We'd buy only existing homes ("used houses", as they call them in Texas).

Never say never.

We're trying to work out all the complicated details of marketing / selling our existing house (where we've lived for the past 5+ years), building a new house about 6 miles west of here, and getting moved from old house to new house without anybody going postal.

The picture above is a rough representation of the plan we've selected (note the front porch!). There will be a third garage bay on the side, and the whole plan may be flipped to better fit the lot we selected. There are a few interior changes to the standard floorplan as well... We need to move the water heater from the garage to the attic so I can have the 23 ft of space necessary to park my F250 4X4 inside for a change. We are also converting the upstairs storage / optional bathroom to an office.

The benefits to this move are many. I won't have to spend my summer ripping up carpet and laying hardwood floor. We'll be a little further away from the traffic and crowds (for a while). The aforementioned 3rd garage bay. A built-in covered patio. Bigger lot for kids/dogs to romp. And a brand-spanking-new Katy ISD high school that will open a year before Connor gets to 9th grade (currently known as "High School #7 and Stadium").

We aren't really downsizing or upsizing, but "modernizing"... with a better floorplan, walls pre-wired for plasma/LCD TVs and sound, and a more "dog-friendly" / "grandkids-friendly" environment.

It is still not a sure thing that the planets will align for this move to happen. We have to sell the current house for "enough" to make it possible. Back in the olden days (i.e. 8 months ago), I understood the real estate market and mortgage requirements. I have no clue how much that has changed. We're about to find out.

With a little luck, this will all be over by August. Until then, I'm going to need to keep some Scotch handy.

Hasta escribo otra vez.
Big S Ranch

Connor's Guest Blog Post

(The following blog was written by my 8-yr old son, Connor. He typed it into my iPhone while we were at the Rodeo on Monday.)

I'm at the rodeo waiting for it to start,and watching horses running around. There are several horses here that I'm watching. And there is a cage of cows, sheep,and other things too.

There are people sitting in chairs,and the time is 6:34PM on the clock right in front of me. There's about 200 or 500 people here so far. And for some reason the horses disappeared when I was writing this.

There is a roof that opens and closes, which is already closed and will stay closed. The rodeo will start and end March 3-22.

The horses are now exiting the big door right now. And now there's trucks coming out behind the horses.

There are people trying to catch a calf and win money. Now people are trying to not fall off rampaging horses. So far no one fell off.

Someone just fell off. He stayed on 6.5 seconds and needed to stay on for 8.0 seconds. Now another guy fell off after 8 seconds.

It is 7:46PM.

Town and Country

The dichotomy of living in Houston, Texas is that you're always a little bit country and a little bit rock-n-roll.

In this past week, I was heavily into conferences, presentations, Mexican legislation, European Union directives and other such stuff.

I was also in hot pursuit of a Ranch Hand grille guard (brush guard) for my F250 pickup truck.


And we were looking at new homesites out by Fulshear, Texas. Feeling the need for more elbow room.


On Friday, I was thrown in the middle of a major issue involving BP on one side, and Halliburton & Schlumberger on the other. Solved it to everyone's satisfaction by noon, by the way.

This evening I scored 4 tickets to Darius Rucker who will be at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo tomorrow. I even shined up my boots.

The dirty little secret is that this feeds both sides of my bi-polar personality. I like wearing the suit & tie, but I also like the boots, jeans, and gimme cap.

We'll try to get some pics from the rodeo tomorrow.

Peace, out.
Big S Ranch

Burglary of a Motor Vehicle - My History

This past week, some ne'er-do-wells attempted to steal my F250 4X4 Crew Cab Diesel Truck. Since they were unsuccessful, and since they stole my K.I.T.T. Knight Rider GPS, the deputy recorded it as Burglary of a Motor Vehicle. Yeah, right. It took me 15 seconds to remove the last tumbler from the busted ignition switch and start it with a screwdriver. They were 15 seconds from stealing my 3 1/2 Tons of Black Fury. A pox on them.

This is the fourth time in my life that I've had a vehicle burglarized. This is the first time they tried to take the whole damned thing. In any event, it got me thinking about the other three times.

First Event: 1982
One morning in the Spring of 1982, while living in Des Moines, I went out to start my car for work. I turned the key. Nothing. Then I noticed the hood was up about an inch.

I raised the hood and saw a gaping hole where the starter used to be. But three things made me laugh. One - This was a 1974 Plymouth Gold Duster with over 100,000 miles, so the starter was going to fail sometime soon, anyway. Two - The thieves left the starter bolts in the transmission bellhousing (making replacement of the starter MUCH easier). Three - They didn't even cut the positive battery cable that connects to the starter. I figured they needed that starter much worse than I did. I half-expected to find a $20 bill and a thank-you note.



Second Event: 1986
One morning in the summer of 1986, while living in Shawnee, KS, I went out to start my 1985 Mitsubishi Tredia, to go to work. I saw a gaping hole in the dash where my stereo used to be. Grrr. One $50 AM-FM-Cassette Stereo gone. Then I looked in the passenger seat, and laughed. There on the seat was the Joe Jackson "Body and Soul" tape that had been in my stereo. The thief took the time to check my taste in music and, finding it inferior, declined to STEAL MY FRIGGING TAPE!



Third Event: 2003
One day in the summer of 2003, while living in Katy, TX, I went to our ranch (yes, the Big S Ranch) in Williamson County. On the ranch, we stored a 1950 Ford 8N tractor that I use to mow the pasture. This day, however, I noticed something amiss. The radiator grill and radiator cap were missing. This is a big deal because they were both 50+ year old original equipment pieces. Very hard to replace. What was worse... in the process of prying off the grill, the thieves poked three gaping holes in the radiator, rendering the tractor unusable. I was not laughing.

Today, the tractor is in my garage, still awaiting a new radiator. I'm doing a complete repair-and-repaint job, in addition to the new radiator (and grill and cap).


Moral of The Story
Shit happens. With each of these tales (including the current attempted truck theft), there was a sunny side. A bright side. A "Don't let the bastards get you down"side. Sometimes this bright side is immediately obvious. Sometimes it takes years to reveal itself. Don't let the obviously bad stuff get to you. Instead, look a little deeper and see if there is a brighter, lighter, or funnier side.

Signing off for now,
Big S Ranch

Hero Dog Stops Truck Theft!!

This is our old dog, Shadow. We have had her since she was about 6 months old. She's now about 11 yrs old. She looks to be a Belgian Shepherd, but we don't know for sure. We just know that she's a bit nutty. She goes bonkers at the slightest hint of thunder, fireworks, or a loud cough. Recently, she's abandoned digging UNDER the fence in favor of eating THROUGH the fence. I keep a supply of fence pickets and Quickrete in the garage for just such emergencies.

Last night, though, she proved her worth and may have justified the cost of all those fence repairs.

About 4:30 AM, Shadow's incessant barking woke me up. Chuy, our 100-lb lab, was asleep in The Boy's Room (as usual). I walked downstairs, turning on lights as I went. The barking stopped.

Since I had a 7AM meeting, I stayed up, got ready for work, and walked out the door around 5:30.

When I got in my truck, I noticed old parking receipts all over the floor. How odd, I thought. These are usually stored in a compartment in the visor. Then I tried to put the key in the ignition and found this:

Someone had tried to steal my truck! The Beast! My 3 1/2 Tons of Black Fury! How DARE they!

We called the sheriff and filed a report. The deputy said two other F250 diesels were hit in the neighborhood between 4:00am and 5:00am this morning. He said it looked like they were startled and left the job 1/2 done.

Evidently, Shadow was barking at the thieves. When the comotion woke me up, the thieves ran off when the lights came on in the house. Good dog, Shadow!

No, they didn't get my truck, but they did get my K.I.T.T. Knight Rider GPS. Rats.

Today, I got the truck fixed (I used a screw driver to start it). Then I installed motion lights by the driveway, and bought The Club for my truck.

>

Mexico City... Still Interesting After All These Years

I made my first trip to Mexico City more than a decade ago, albeit just to the airport.

Since July 2007, I've made a couple of dozen trips here, working on a very large project with PEMEX, the state-owned oil company. Yeah, it is crowded (25 million people). Yeah, it is dangerous (the kidnapping capital of the WORLD). Yeah, it can be smoggy and dirty and poor. Still, I've grown fond of the city. You have to love a place where the opposition party pays people to dance buck-naked to protest the government (show times are 10 and 2, by the way).

It is really a shame that crime and corruption are so pervasive here. Most of the people I deal with are polite, intelligent, and exceptionally nice. It takes a VERY long time to begin or end a meeting because of the ritual of handshakes, hugs, and air-kisses. The Mexicans are a very touchy-feely people.

This trip is a short one... I flew down this morning and will fly back to Houston tomorrow evening. I'm taking a few pictures (with my iPhone, so set your expectations accordingly) so you can see some of what I see.


Nice to know that my iPhone knows where I'm at while I'm in Mexico.

A room with a view... from my hotel room.

Lunch was interesting. Yes, those are octopus suckers there in the middle of this dish.

My current home-away-from-home. The rooms here are very nice, and the rate is better than either the Camino Real or the Sheraton Maria Isabel.

Oh, yeah! I am TOTALLY going to wear this robe at some point! I'll spare you that image, though. You may be reading this at meal time.

So, you notice that I didn't put in any "work" pics. I did that intentionally. Work is work, whether it is in Houston or Ciudad de Mexico. We all know how bone-numbing business trips can be, with cramped flights, long lines, stalled traffic, interminable meetings, and the resulting to-do lists. My workday started around 4:30 this morning and ended about 9:30 tonight. Tomorrow will be at least as bad.

Signing out for now,
Big S Ranch

The Weekend In Pictures

We had a very busy and fun weekend. For anyone who hasn't perused our Flickr site, let me explain. No, there is no time. Let me sum up.

Friday night after work, I stopped on the way home to pick up a pallet of sod for the front yard.

When I got home, I saw my son's newly-lifted pickup in my driveway. We weren't expecting them, so it was a very pleasant surprise.

The next morning, I laid out the sod in the part of the front yard I'd prepared the previous weekend. When the sod was in the truck, I thought I had WAY too much. As it turns out, I could have used about 6 more squares. Oh well. I think it will suffice.

After the sod work was done, we loaded up the truck and we headed to Austin. There, we picked up our 19 yr old daughter so she could give us a tour of her school, THE University of Texas.

After three hours of tromping around the UT campus, we ate dinner at my favorite Austin Mexican restaurant... Not Chuy's, not Baby Acapulco (those are favorite Mexican DRINKING restaurants)...

On Sunday, we drove down I-35 to visit my in-laws. My father-in-law turns 80 this week. His wife (my step-mom-in-law) has had several major surgeries recently, so we wanted to check on them.

We finally got home around 6:30pm on Sunday. It was a wonderful roadtrip and, as usual, I needed to go back to the office today in order to get some rest :)

Tomorrow morning, I'm off to Mexico City, the kidnapping capital of the world, even though the US State Department has issued a travel alert for Mexico: http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/pa_3028.html

Signing off for now,

BigSRanch

How Does This Thing Work Again?

My little MySpace blog has reached the end of its useful lifecycle.
If I can get this page to work, I'll put my new blogs here.