Funny to no fault

Night of the Living Deed
A Haunted Guesthouse mystery #1


Almost as funny as advertised. I'm scared (no pun intended) to say anything because I might give away the plot. Single mom buys an turn-of-the-century Victorian house and starts to fix it up as a guesthouse for vacationers. Only whenever she turns her back, strange things happen.  Strange and annoying and creepy.

She's the one who has to solve the mystery, however, she's not technically the detective in this story. But that comes later.  She's very likable; a hard-working amateur handyman who'll take on just about any project, including a crumbling mansion where holes mysteriously appear in walls.  It's going to be a great series.

Must be read by anyone about to retire!

Definitely the book to own. So much stuff! Almost all you ever need to know about retirement income--when and why you might consider annuities; which are good and which to avoid; stock index funds, bond funds, bucketing and all that stuff. Includes a long discussion of the 4% rule and why it needs to be tweaked according to your circumstances, retirement goals, life expectancy and stuff.

Underwhelming...for a book about a dog!

Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words
by John W. Pilley

Pretty fascinating stuff, here. Man sets out to see how many words he can teach his Border Collie puppy, and basically finds there isn't any answer to that question. Most interesting to me was that he could teach the dog "take the ball to Pop-Pop" but only if he reversed subject and object in the sentence, as they do in some languages other than English: "take, to Pop-Pop, the ball."

I was less than thrilled about two-thirds through when the chapters started to focus on where they exhibited Chaser and what he did and how people reacted to him. That was kinda boring.  But hey, don't blame the dog!

Gardening in my Roots, mid-April

Snap peas are finally starting to bloom!  Heavy rains all day Saturday discouraged the tiny crop of beets and Swiss chard I have left, but it's too late in the season to replant it.  Tomatoes and peppers--the ones in the ground--are happy. Except possibly for the Jalapeno pepper I pulled up while weeding.  I shoved it quickly back down in the mud and will hope it forgives the imposition.



Notice the problem with beans--if you plant them too late, bugs are hatched out of the egg and ready to chow down!


















Next April I might just forgo a garden and spend my whole spring bird watching. In the short time after work I saw Cattle Egrets, American Goldfinch, American Crow, hawk unknown species, probably red-tailed, Carolina Chickadee, wren unknown species, Eastern bluebirds (lots), Eastern Phoebe, hummingbird unknown sp., red-headed woodpecker, stupid Cardinals, and a  yellow-rumped warbler.  All very common species, I admit, but the bird guides are encouraging--the better you know familiar species, the better you become at spotting the unfamiliar ones.

Lake Whitney Return Trip

 Dogs, it seems, don't care much for fishing.

FM 1244 east to 933 to 174 North to Chisolm Trail Parkway. Then TX-121 until it becomes Sam Rayburn Tollway. Definitely a preferred route. 933 is not a bad road--it's two-laned but smooth and has broad shoulders. A strong west wind kept trying to blow us off the road, but Ed coped well. Chisolm Trail out there is mostly two lanes with a concrete barrier between them. But it's limited access and brand new, with little traffic and occasional passing lanes.

1. Planned distance: 131 miles
2. Map time estimate: 2:21
3. Adjusted estimate: not done
4. Actual distance: probably pretty close
5. Actual time: 2:36 (including five minutes to park the Mammoth thing)
6. No stops other than traffic lights.
7. Average mph trip: 50

We made a pretty early start; we'd decided to go up the Arkansas the next day to visit with Ed's brother before he went home for more medical treatment.  It was another lovely day and a shame to leave, especially on a Saturday. When I made the reservation I'd only booked Thursday-Saturday because all of the good sites were full that Saturday night. But no one ever came to occupy the space beside us, so possibly if we'd asked we'd have found there was a cancellation and we might could have moved to it.

It was an uneventful drive, but not exactly pleasant because who can enjoy driving a hundred-some-odd miles just to unload, eat carryout food, sleep and get up to drive another three hundred?

My bird list is embarrassingly short. Cormorants, cedar waxwings, Carolina wren, Bewick's wren, Canada geese.  Possible grebes on theh water. Mockingbird. Gulls of unknown species. (I'm not good with gulls)  Great Blue Heron; American white pelican, chickadee,  roadrunner, and probable Cassin's sparrow.





Important notes:
1. I need to write a funny about operating in the constrained spaces of an RV. I didn't whonk my head or whang my elbow this time, but I sure did get conservative in my movements. And to think we travel to get away from small spaces!
2. Never assume a park has firewood to sell OR worms!
3. Charge the dumb phone before traveling, and when you get up in the morning, make sure the flaky charging cable was really connected.
5. According to the trip odometer, we should be able to go about 500 miles on one tank of gas.

Lake Whitney Day 2

 







Breakfast!  (for dogs)

 

Finding out how our tin can operates in the rain!  The weather forecasters said it was going to rain in the wee hours, say around 4am, and of course they were wrong. It came a brisk shower at 8:00.  Luckily we'd already gotten outside and walked the dogs. Zack ate breakfast; Izzy just avoided hers; and we were sitting out watching the clouds over the lake...








when it came a sprinkle. Dogs went inside and sprinkle stopped, but after a few minutes it came down in buckets. Happy that the dogs were safely in Mommoth's massive belly, we sprinted for the door.


By the time we'd cooked and eaten breakfast, the storm was
gone!










Our world was washed clean and already starting to dry up. Out over the lake you could see it leaving...

And soon it was gone without a trace. Sadly, the wind whipped up again so we went back to my sheltered inlet to fish.


But not before I spent an chunk of time the battle of the wrens in the scrubby trees around the campsite. It appeared to be a Bewick's wren and Carolina wren having a squabble over territory. I never saw them both clearly, but I clearly saw them both. 


And also, an invisible bird visited intermittently and favored us with a beautiful, distinctive song. I never saw the bird, but the song was gripping. On the next day I finally had the good sense to record it on my phone.  It almost completely replicates the song of the Cassin's Sparrow, which is likely to be foudn in that area, so I'd call the bird "identified" on voice alone except for one thing. All fo the songs on record are followed by two low notes. Even the book descriptions mention them. But my stupid phone recording didn't catch them! 

It was noisy that day--windy, other birds around, and I was never very close to the bird that I couldn't ever see. So I don't know if my phone simply failed tocatch the final notes or if they just weren't there.  If such a thing ever happens again, I'm going to write down my human guess at the notes, rhythm and tone of the song to supplement the recording.

Nothing much happened the rest of the day. And that was kind of good. Actually, kind of great.  Sitting around the edge of the lake with a fishing rod propped up with rocks and a bell on the end. I kept my binocs handy but seldom got to use them. There were birds, of course, but they kepts up in the scrubby brush behind me. So I just sat.

A couple of times I thought of all I could have been doing--making notes on the computer, reading one of the four books I brought along, trimming dog fur or claws, cooking and eating lunch....

And I sat. When you stare across a lake, sometimes it becomes all you do. And when the sun starts to drop down, the ripples start to sparkle. Like frost on grass but you don't have to move to see the ever-changing picture--just stay very, very still.



A few years ago, when we shopped for entertainment centers, we noticed that the new trend was to place fake crystal fireplaces in various colors directly under the TV. The "flames" glowed like coals. It was pretty, I guess, but so very, very stupid. After the novelty of first purchase had worn off, who would ever look at the vapid fake blazes, when there was a loud, colorful, ever-changing picture just above?

But if they replaced the fake fireplace with a video of water on a rippling lake, who'd turn on the TV?

I don't think my dogs especially cared for the view. Or the rocks.














Or fishing in general. After poking around and getting wet, they found a slightly-less-uncomfortable spot at water's edge and tried to sleep.

Ed eventually caught a bass, bigger than mine!  It went back in the water, too. No catfish ever sniffed at our fake doughball bait or even the chunk of hot dog I tried. I think the sharp current kept moving our bait into inacessible holes in the rocky bottom, where no fish could find it.  I wish I'd tried a float.

That night we built a little fire and sat out lake, alternately watching the coals and the seagull feeding frenzy at the middle of the lake.  All day long I'd seen the same two gulls patrolling the lake--they'd float in the air against the wind but somehow manipulating the angle so that they never needed to flap. Away they'd go, vanishing in the south somewhere. And fifteen minutes later they'd be back, heading south again.

But that night there were dozens of them, all hitting the water in the same area and shrieking about it. It was too far for binoculars to make the details, but I couldn't help but smile at the excitement. A school of shad close to the surface?  Shrimp hatching? Springtime?

Mammoth in the Spring

                                   “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door…You step
                                                      into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is 
                                                                  no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
                                                                                                                     -J R R Tolkien
Thursday, 7 March 2019 --  Home to Lake Whitney State Park

 
We took 75 down to I-635 loop east all around to SH 67 southbound to 35W. Then TX 579 (aka 81) to TX 22. I-635 eastbound sucks as always and it's extremely rough. 67 was under construction and walled by concrete for the first five miles or so. After that it was gloriously empty, wide and clear.
1. Planned distance: 124 miles
2. Map time estimate: 2:07
3. Adjusted estimate: not done
4. Actual distance: probably pretty close
5. Actual time: 2:46
6. No stops other than traffic lights.
7. Average mph trip: 45

The I-635 loop around the east side of Dallas was horrible when I moved here thirty years ago, and it's gotten worse with age. Loops were designed to keep through-going traffic out of downtown and let travellers bypass a city, but they quickly became prime locations for malls, car dealers, and restaurants. These days you're better off to skip the loops and barrel right through the deserted inner cities.

And 635 one is one of the worst I've ever seen, comparable only to the unbelievably hideous loop around Houston. Fort Worth's 820 loop used to be a frightful mess, but they've recently constructed these "Express Lanes". They look and feel like HOV lanes, but they but can be traveled by anyone, not just HOVs, for a price. (Tolls.) We haven't tried an express lane in the RV yet, but in a car they're like little magic sprinkles on a miracle cake. You just glide on by.

We might have to avoid them in the RV altogether...or not. I just took a look at the toll charges we incurred on the return trip--about $23. These were normal toll roads, not express lanes. But we went through a total of sixteen toll stations and each individual charge was not much higher than it would have been in a car. I didn't check exact numbers and don't want to. I'm not that OCD.

We arrived at the park check-in station at 1pm according to the clock there, but on second thought it must have been 2pm. My phone died before we hit the town of Whitney. It hadn't been charged completely the night before and couldn't seem to charge off the power port in the Mammoth. Luckily we're a two phone family.


It was a big old lake!  And the spots were pull-through, our first! A little road hugged the lake shore and had about four pull-through spots on either side of it. I had reserved one on the lake side of the road, so we "owned" our little stretch of lake and had all the view in the world.

We were on the east side of the lake (hence the campground name, Sunset Loop) and the prevailing winds or some other factor had caused the bank to be hugely undercut and caving in at spots. It was difficult, but not impossible, to climb down to the water at our location.  Ed was the first to get a fishing pole in but I demurred. Using a lure, even with my brand new ultralite extendable fishing rod, was going to require me to cast with the wind, not against it. The wind was almost directly in our faces down there and the waves were fierce.

So I wimped out, walked the dogs, and ate lunch of fruit and spicy seafood ramen. But Dad would never have let such an opportunity pass, so  eventually rigged up my old fishing rod with a lure and stuck a handful of light weights and a package of lures in my pocket.

The dogs and I ended up walking just a little way north until we found an easy, crumbling trail of rocks down to a spot where I would cast cross-wind. But it just wasn't a good day for fishing. If I'd been set up for cat fishing, it might have been possible to put some weight on and get out in the channel, away from the rocky bottom, but the entry station didn't sell bait and there wasn't a park store. Skunked!

At my inlet I could get my lure out a ways and then slowly reel in--but only for a short distance.  The lure and two or three pinch shot weighed it down enough to cast, but if I let it fall to the rocky bottom, it got hung up immediately. 

After a while, a flock of pelicans wheeled over. Gorgeous!  They're absolutely the most synchronized birds in flight that I've ever seen. Flap, flap, flap; glide-- Flap, flap, flap; turn; glide--- And right after they left I got a fish!

Largemouth bass, I judged. (After doing a little research, I later decided it was more likely a white bass of some sort. It was pale gray and had an indistinct stripe.) In any event, it had the largest mouth I ever saw on a fish and it was clearly a bass. About eight to ten inches long.  He was only hooked in the mouth but it took me longer than it should have to get the hook loose, admire him a bit (no phone so no picture; it was still charging) and slip him back into the water. I think he was okay.

Gardening in my Roots, end of March woes

For the last three nights, the forecast for McKinney has been 36. We're not in McKinney and we're at a lower elevation, so that means our temperatures could possibly dip to 32. If the night is clear and windless, that means frost.

So we have a "buckets on; buckets off" situation. For three days. Blah!

And also for the pepper plants which aren't i the garden yet but really want to be, "plants in, plants out."