I’m not quite sure when it was I first stumbled upon Linda’s blog at The Task At Hand where she writes under the name Shoreacres. It must have been about a year ago though because…

I am always amazed when I stumble across a Coffee Geek. It makes my muses seem pretty pedestrian. I’ve been geeking out over coffee since yesterday, which is fun. The coolest thing I’ve been finding…

Going through my rss feeds for today I see that Susan Albert has headed off to New Mexico for a winter break from the Texas drought. Her pictures of the NM snow made me jealous…

Today the red oak in the backyard is probably at peak color. Never in the years since I planted it has it been quite this vividly fall like. The funny thing about today is that…

Coldplays song The Scientist is performed by country music legend Willie Nelson for the soundtrack of the short film entitled, “Back to the Start” which is a commercial for Chipotle.Produced for Chipotle Mexican Grill by…

I figured when I saw blooms back at the end of September there was a chance I would see apples yet this year. All it took was for the heat to break and the rains…

When I ordered some seedling trees from Pennsylvania the week of Thanksgiving, I was holding out as late as possible to have them shipped dormant to our SE Texas version of fall. What I didn’t…

https://www.youtube.com/embed/fX7Q-0QuID4 It also reinforced the fact that most of this years storms were pushed off out into the Atlantic. Watching Irene work her way up the east coast all the way to Canada had me remembering the…

I just spent the last couple of hours reliving the subliminal sounds from my formative years. I know they were’t my parents sounds…I can’t say where I ever heard them during those years of the…

Pledge to the Republicans Print or type your name And your home address All of it Dear former Republican friend: This letter is to let you know that your Party’s tactics of destroying the ability…

Fraser Fir, Image via Wikipedia Sitting on the front porch, outside my office window (how strange it is to be able to say that), is an artificial pre-lit Christmas tree. It is the one we used in…

58% – Portion of Americans over age 18 who drank coffee yesterday 3.4 – Number of cups of coffee people identified as “coffee drinkers” drink per day National Coffee Drinking Trends Study, The National Coffee…

This will be the last video in the series on our home building project…Demolishing the old… https://youtu.be/yBklqUTnMs0?si=oFuqKg1aT_xgFyEj Now…It’s on with life and settling in. Thanksgiving at my mom’s and Christmas here with the kids and grand-kids.

At least everything but the unpacking. After over a year of planning and meetings and dust and dirt the new house is done and the old house has gone away. Here is a view from…

We passed a milestone yesterday when we said goodbye to the bright yellow modern equivalent of my grandparents “Quarter Moon”. In other words, they picked up the “port-a-potty” that has graced our site since June….

While my home state has never been at the forefront of environmental consciousness, the news in the electrical generating front is finally turning toward the green. After an initial rush to install wind farms in west Texas…

Just last week Tipper was talking about “Tater Soup” which brought back all kinds of childhood memories. Reading her post from the southern Appalachians had my nose and taste buds fooling my brain into thinking there…

Heavy rains for drought-stricken Texas A slow-moving low pressure system brought the heaviest rains of the year to large portions of rain-starved Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas over the weekend. Radar-estimated rainfall amounts reached eight inches…

Thanks to John Scalzi for the lead.

One of my favorite music spots on the web is Wolfgang’s Vault. I get weekly emails from them as they release new concerts from the archives. Today they sent out a link to this concert…

It looks as if all of the rain from Tropical Storm Lee has managed to miss my part (and most of the rest) of Texas. We were really hoping to have a couple of days…

The number of people moving through the house this past week has higher than at any other time since we began. Stone work, texture, cabinets, trim carpenters, painters, electricians, plumbers, counter-top measurement techs, storage building…

This week the inside has begun to look as much like a house as the outside has for a couple of weeks now… Sometime in the next few days the rock will get put on…

After watching a far off lightning show on Wednesday evening yesterday morning brought a wondrous sight…A rather large thunderous rainstorm blew through our immediate area. The winds blew, lightning blasted the ground over and over again setting car…

It’s been another week of work on the house. The main projects have been plumbing fixes, septic install, and blowing in the wall insulation. Morning coffee on the back porch hasn’t been very comfortable due…

Here lately I’ve been taking my morning coffee out to the back porch of the new house most mornings. I noticed something this morning that had been kind of bothering me even as it hadn’t…

Thats why the Nash Prairie matters so much. As Chronicle reporter Matthew Tresaugue reported Tuesday “Life abounds at states last surviving bit of coastal prairie,” Page B1, July 26, the 400-plus acres of never-plowed land…

As the temperatures here in Texas hover around the century mark and the heat indexes are pushing 115 on a regular basis, I can understand the attraction of running for President in the NE. Reporting…

It has been hot, and most of this weeks work has been inside…Wiring, plumbing, HVAC. The exterior siding is now complete, with the exception of a little stone work. Between builders and workers and inspectors…

For the third day in a row, Texas power grid operators have declared a Level 1 energy emergency, calling on all available power generators, tapping power from neighboring grids and asking customers to conserve their usage. And…

For most of the past week things seemed to be moving a bit slow, even as progress was made each day…Then suddenly it is really starting to look like a house. Today the roofers are…

I know it’s a mixed metaphor, but the GOP has really become a sad, sad representation of the old saying… You can lead a mule to water but you can’t make him drink. “I am…

Watching the house grow out my back door has been a sight this past week. We went from bare studs standing across the slab to something that only lacks a roof deck to look like…

The framing crew went home early after waiting a couple of hours for the rain to stop. They managed to get about three hours of work done before the rain stopped them though. Here is a quick…

Want to know what it takes to make it rain in your neighborhood? Start a construction project. My corner of SE Texas has been in a drought for over a year… Longer than many of…

There is a house growing in my backyard and I find my attention drawn to the activity for long periods each day. This is how it went in the last week and a half: So…

(Rep. Eric A. “Rick”)Crawford, the freshman from Arkansas, was among 63 legislators who sent a letter to Obama on Thursday that imagined Aug. 3 arriving without a deal. In the letter, the legislators urged Obama…

I walked outside this morning to speak  to our construction manager… It was early… It was HOT! After coming back inI started wondering why it felt so hot so I swung over to the Weather…

That said, I must admit the best fireworks display I’ve ever experienced took place in isolation and nearly-total silence, accompanied only by the murmurings of a couple of friends, the sound of a car engine…

Last week, there was a day I hesitate to call perfect only because I would hate it if the perfect day had already come and gone in my life. But when that perfect day comes…

It has been a busy week in our back yard. On Tuesday they cleared the site… On Wednesday a crew started the forms… And this morning the trucks came rolling in…12 of them in all….

Early last week I wandered around my back yard and the woods behind my house playing with the Flip Video camera…No fancy editing just the “magic” of the Flip Share software… Today we have had…

While it will never go down in the record books, yesterday brought us a gift of moisture from the sky and not a hose. This morning while we slept we had another gift. Our drought is far…

After months of planning. After months of negotiating. After weeks of waiting on the city’s methodology. It finally happened today…We broke ground on the construction drive to the new house… And now we wait for…

Just for the record… Since fire season began Nov. 15, the Texas Forest Service and area fire departments have so far responded to 12,362 fires that have burned 3,080,013 acres, officials added. via Wildfires continue…