Burn Baby Burn!

One of the many challenges of living in the remote paradise which is Naruna is trash disposal. Residents of large metropolitan centers, such as Burnet or Lampasas, can just call some city department and ask for large item pickup, and their discarded appliances or tree limbs will magically disappear from curbside. Those who choose to put a little elbow room between themselves and their neighbors must be more personally involved getting rid of their refuse. Usually this means piling up any burnable trash including brush and tree limbs to be burned when conditions are right.

With the bountiful rain this week, the county called off its burn ban for awhile. In years past, I've learned the ban may be in place again as soon as the sun starts to shine, so I jumped at the opportunity to get rid of our burn pile. It has been growing for almost a year, and one of the last additions was our tree from Christmas. Of course, there are some problems with starting a fire when all the fuel is completely saturated after three or four days of rain. Trying to burn soggy brush sometimes causes otherwise normal people to do stupid things involving gasoline, diesel or kerosene. After taking care of some of these unfortunates in my operating room, a solution appeared last year. I purchased a brush burner which just connects to a twenty pound propane tank, allowing me to burn anything which will stand still and get my exercise while chasing those which won't. No flammable liquids involved and the LB is much happier.

Of course, any outdoor activity is more enjoyable with some company. In the first photo, you can see Sam and Rosie helping by checking the perimeter as I begin to light the fire. Even though their attention tends to wander when food is not involved, they still check in whenever I go back out to see how the burn is progressing. After all, they don't want to be left out of anything. The second photo illustrates why there are so many warnings about real Christmas trees, as our thoroughly soaked one almost exploded when the flames reached it.

As I finish writing, the bonfire has been reduced to smoldering hunks which will take some time to be completely consumed. Yet, even now, I am looking up at dead limbs and thinking that, tomorrow...the pile starts growing again.

Rain at Last

Naruna and Central Texas have been in a serious drought situation for over 18 months. The last time we saw any significant amount of precipitation was spring of 2007, when Marble Falls received 19 inches of rain one night. At the same time they were being washed away, Naruna got 3 1/2 inches. That was our last rainfall which amounted to much, and we have been under a Burn Ban for most of the past three years because of the critically dry conditions.

A fortuitous collision of several weather fronts over Texas this week brought some extremely appreciated moisture to Naruna. In the past 48 hours, a little over 5 inches of rain has fallen. Trees are budding, sprigs of grass are pushing up through the mud, and everything is wonderously damp and drippy. At the beginning of this week, we were setting records for high temperatures in the upper 80's and lower 90's, and now it is cool and comfortable, and a fire in the fireplace has been welcome the last couple of nights.

It's About Time

My Lovely Bride and I have been keeping company for going on thirty five years, during which time we have lived in four different states with twelve or thirteen different addresses. We purchased homes together, had three children, 5 or 6 dogs and more cats than I can remember. We nursed each other through some pretty serious times and continued to put up with each other through all these years. With all this in mind, I recently decided to do the "right thing" and make an honest woman of her.

Now before everyone gets too excited, I'll try to explain. We took care of the legal details over thirty-three years ago in San Antonio, so all the cats, dogs, and kids are, what used to be referred to as, "legitimate". That's not a term that gets used much anymore and there are a bunch of people out there who obviously don't understand the definition or application of the word...but that needs to be another posting. Our wedding was wonderful, everybody had a great time and there are even a few who are able to remember some of the proceedings. Papa Wally was footing the bill for the rehearsal dinner, and wanted everybody to have a good time, so the bar never closed.

The one minor detail which somehow got overlooked during all that joining together involved wedding rings. Most of you probably realize that weddings and such are the domain of women. Men are involved only peripherally, and then only grudgingly. Wedding bands were selected by the blushing bride-to-be and her mother, and my contribution was to pay for her ring. With all the excitement and hangovers surrounding the big event, the LB went ahead and paid for the rings when she picked them up and never bothered to ask me for my share.

Fast forward twenty years or so, we retired from the Army, moved to the Texas Hill Country, and she managed to lose her self-purchased wedding ring. There was an interesting story around its loss, and a thorough search was made, but bottom-line is the ring went away, never to return. Another 12 years slipped by with the LB ringless, before I began to feel pangs of guilt. After all, I had never bought the woman a wedding ring! So on the recent Hallmark Holiday known as Valentines Day, we moseyed down to the mall, visited 5 or 6 jewelery stores and tried on a multitude of rings before deciding on the perfect one. Of course, it wasn't available in her size, so a special order was put in and within a month the ring arrived. Another trip to Austin secured the long awaited band, and saw it on the LB's finger where it really did look perfect. And it only took me thirty-three years.

Everybody Doing Fine!

Around the middle of January, I wrote about two of the residents of Naruna who were in the process of recuperating. The Lovely Bride had a skin cancer whittled off the side of her nose and Oliver, the whiny cat, had skinned his nose trying to get out of a live trap. As the first picture shows, they were fine back then, just with funny looking noses.

They are now pretty much back to normal, although Oliver's nose will probably never look the same.

The second photo shows them this afternoon, enjoying a sunny Texas winter day by resting their eyes...for just fifteen minutes or so. Just another lazy day in Naruna.

Gun Show

Sunday afternoon the son-in-law and I headed into town for a little "guy-time". He is still recuperating from repairs to his collar bone following a minor motorcycle mishap, and has been limited a bit in getting out and about. A gun show in north Austin was our recreational goal.

Gun shows are self-justifying events. Just as no woman needs a reason to go shopping at Neiman-Marcus, men are always ready to wander up and down the rows of crowded tables. We visit firearms exhibits to breathe in the heady aroma of gun oil and solvent...emerging revitalized and refreshed after marinating in this gunpowder and testosterone rich environment.

Although no excuse is necessary, we did have some rather vague goals for our visit. I was wanting to look over the selection of Russian made rifles, including some of the AK variants as well as the civilian rifles now becoming available. After spending the last year in Iraq, the son-in-law was to be my subject matter expert. At the same time, he was wanting to evaluate some of the newer 9mm pistols as possible replacement carry pieces.

Sadly, although we were able to find what we were looking for, we emerged empty handed at the end of the day. We fell victim to our own need to go into this wholesale free-for-all armed with as much information as we could. The guns were there, and finding interesting ones was not difficult. However, when we began checking prices, it was painfully obvious that the heyday of the Great American Gun Show has faded. Weapons were generally marked up 50% - 100% over prices available on-line. One table had stock Saiga rifles(about $400 online) marked at $1,395.00, and wouldn't budge a cent. Heavily used SKS rifles were marked, but not selling, at around $350, rather than the approximate $150 found online. If you didn't mind scouring off layers of Cosmoline, you could get an SKS for just under $300...but you couldn't tell what the condition was under the congealed grease. If you just didn't have any idea of prevailing prices, you could have spent a lot of money and walked out with some "treasure".

We fared somewhat better while looking at pistols. Most of these were new, and pricing was pretty consistent from vendor to vendor. After an hour of hefting black handguns, they all began to look and feel alike. Sensory overload kicked in, and energy levels began to wane. What was a little surprising, was we both ended up gravitating toward the same couple of pistols, with the new Beretta PX4 Storm emerging as our mutual favorite. Now all we need is an extra 6 or 700 dollars each and our wives in a generous mood.

After getting home, I kept pondering how different this gun show was from past events I had attended. At shows in Houston or San Antonio in the 70's and 80's, the atmosphere was more of a group of guys getting together to spend time together, swap stories, and maybe sell something to pay for the table rental. Family groups were common, and while there was plenty of junk being offered, there were always those unexpected bargains if you looked hard enough.

Yesterday, there was an almost frantic feel, as shoppers rushed about looking for something they could afford. It felt a lot like last minute shopping on Christmas Eve. Gun magazines and conservative media have been loudly warning about the expected coming crackdown on gun rights under the new Democratic regime. Shooters have been told to stock up and get ready for the coming political, economic, and social turmoil which is going to overtake our country at any moment! It seems another casualty of our country's political battles is the gun show as we knew it.

Walking to Emmaus

How do you describe an awakening? Do your eyes pop open and the world is abruptly revealed in all its glory? Or is it a slow process by which we discover those small and beautiful pieces which go together to make up our world? My recent Walk to Emmaus was closer to the latter.
I won’t try to give all the details of an Emmaus Walk. A Walk is something which needs to be experienced, not described. Rather, I will make an effort to express some of my responses. Briefly, a Walk is a very organized and focused activity which gives participants the opportunity and structure to evaluate their relationship with God, to interact with others doing the same, and to explore ways of being a better disciple.
Distractions are minimized, with watches and cell phones disappearing on arrival. Walks are segregated by gender. The needs of participants are met by a massive outside support team which takes care of meals, housekeeping, and even cheerleading when necessary. One of many surprises of the weekend was how many people turned out for different functions, even though they didn’t know any of the participants personally.
The variety of participants was something of a surprise to me. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but there was a tremendous variety of people there. Retirees, businessmen, ranchers, police officers, teachers, medical types, construction workers, and a few unemployed were just a sampling. Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, and some that defied easy categorization. Ages ranged from early twenties to the eighties. Blue collar, white collar, no collar. It was really not a homogeneous group…the only things we had in common being our beliefs and a desire to explore them.
How do you get a group of grown men who don’t know each other to open up about their thoughts and beliefs and values? Talks, study, group discussions, and doing everything together quickly broke down some barriers. We worshipped together, lived together, meditated together, and broke bread together literally and figuratively. One of the greatest sources of joy to me during this time, was getting to sing together. If you don’t get goose bumps when you are with fifty men singing Blessed Assurance or How Great Thou Art at the top of their lungs and you know they mean every word, you never will. Over and over, I would get choked up as we sang old hymns I knew by heart, and new praise hymns I had never heard before. It has been a long time since I have heard such joy expressed in song.
I’ve been home for almost a week now, and I am still trying to sort out the personal effects of my Walk. Some things are clearer now, and some priorities have been rearranged. One thing I am certain of, if you are offered the opportunity to go on a Walk to Emmaus, cinch up those sandals and go!

Island Comfort Food

When you're stuck in the middle of landlocked central Texas, and you need an island food fix, what do you do? You improvise, naturally. I went cruising on the net a couple of weeks ago because I had a craving for some coconut syrup like I used to find when I lived on the windward side of Oahu. Not surprisingly, I was able to locate a source...the problem was the shipping was more than the cost of a couple bottles of syrup and some guava jelly. I bit the bullet and put in the order and waited. And waited. It took almost two weeks for the UPS driver to make it to my door, and when he did I tore into the package. My Lovely Bride took pity on me, and tonight she fixed what was a typical Hawaiian breakfast when we lived in paradise. She whipped up some pancakes, fried some thick slices of Spam, and topped it all with a couple of eggs fried over easy. I also had to fix a short stack with some toasted macadamia nuts on top, slathered with plenty of coconut syrup to satisfy my sweet tooth. Now that's what I call a well balanced meal!