Chriistmas lights

Went to look at Christmas lights on Saturday night.
I knew I'd seen this one before... they've improved it though... there are MORE lights in the tree and some "bouncy" looking LED arches on the lawn. The sign on the lawn tells you where to tune on FM to hear the music and to request canned food donations which are forwarded to local charity by the owner of the house.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szLmAPW39uE&feature=related

6th floor

On red lights, people stand on the X. Some take pictures of the widow permanently propped half open, some have their pictures taken on the spot grinning stupidly.

On Saturday we went to The 6th Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. A museum dedicated to the assassination, presidency and legacy of JFK. The museum is in the old Texas Schoolbook Depository Building. Yup, that TSDB. The window Oswald shot from is in a corner; the area is behind Plexiglas and the "shooters perch" is set up exactly as it was on 11/22/63. From the next window over, looking down at the two "X"s painted in the street it looks like an easy shot for a scoped rifle. The view is eerie, both from the window and at street level, having seen it countless times in countless films and TV shows and specials.

At first it felt weird in a "crime scene" kind of way, but thinking about it, it's much more like a scene from a recurring dream you've had a thousand times and suddenly find yourself in while wide awake; only the cars are different and the trees are taller, nothing else seems to have changed.

We spent a good 3 hours looking around at the displays, all the time hearing in the background competing sound clips of Kennedy giving various speeches and press conferences, the music and 21-gun salutes at his funeral, and the almost constant sound of Walter Cronkite announcing that Kennedy had been shot and was confirmed dead. Good old Walt. He'll be there reporting that sad news hundreds of times a day for a many decades to come.

The museum gives adequate time to the conspiracy theories, and the debate whether JFK had time to accomplish enough to have been a great president, or inspired such great things in others afterwards that more of his legacy lies there.
On a side note, I added to my shot glass collection Saturday at the museum, the Hard Rock Cafe, and House of Blues, both nearby.

Road trip

The drive from Dallas to San Antonio is about 275 miles and takes about 4 hours if you're focused on what you're doing.
On the way you drive through Waco though, and of course who could resist the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame? Man, there are lots of guns in there. One display had the boots of one ranger. Most displays were badges & guns, but It was worth seeing.

Somehow I just can't imagine a better souvenir from anywhere in Texas than a "coonskin cap" from the Alamo. By the way, you wont see "Davy Crockett" caps there; he referred to himself as David, so that's how he's referred to in Texas. As far as I can tell, they only have them in kid sizes, but I wasn't buying it to actually wear. They also don't have the face of the raccoon on the front like Fess Parker's on T.V. maybe that's a PETA thing.
Anyway, I now have a coonskin cap from the Alamo on my desk at home.


The Tower of the Americas is the tallest building in the San Antonio skyline. It was built in 1968 and was the tallest observation tower in the U.S. until Stratosphere was built. $6 gets you all day access. We rode up, got a good look around, then went to the Alamo, had dinner, the went back up at sunset to watch it get dark.
It gets really windy at night on one side of the observation deck. Like 30-40 mph wind. I'm sure a tower that tall must sway in a breeze like that, but it felt steady.

In the bottom picture, the cross shaped building in the trees is the Alamo.
The 4th of July must be great from up there in the tower.
Next time in San Antonio I want to get a better look at the riverwalk.
Excellent place for a road trip.

Side Trip

"In Step" came through the speakers while we looked for a parking spot.I'd spotted Stevie's statue on the Riverwalk; Google had let us know the closest intersection. We parked the car, and took a walk in the park. It was a side-trip on a drive from San Antonio back to Dallas. I'll save the main road-trip for another post. A ribbon held flowers in the statues right hand, what looked like a knock-off of a Transformer(?) was in the left with a red guitar pick. There were two picks when we left. We listened to SRV all the way from San Antonio to Austin on a beautiful sunny June day. The detour didn't take long, but it was still pretty nice of Amanda to let me have a half hour of hero worship on a Sunday afternoon.

Tourist Stuff

Thursday a friend of mine had a really nice surprise for me. She came by after work, told me to bring a camera, a hat, and a couple of other things. We drove for about 45 minutes, and came to Laurel Land Funeral Home. Sounds like a fun trip, right? I had mentioned a few days before that, having heard that Stevie Ray Vaughan was buried in the Dallas area, I wanted to make the "pilgrimage" to Stevie's grave to pay my respects and to leave behind a guitar pick. I heard long ago that Buddy Holly's grave is covered with picks and thought that was a pretty cool tribute.
By the way, I saw in a guitar magazine that Buddy's Stratocaster was recently given a good cleaning before going to either the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,or the Smithsonian. Until recently his parents had it and when fans came by they actually let them hold and even play Buddy's old guitar. Nice people.
So there we were driving around this pretty large (in my experience) cemetery when we saw there was a funeral happening; we saw the pall bearers placing the casket on a stand, then later in the wander, the casket being lowered into the ground.Finally, we decided to go to the front office and ask where to find Stevie. We got a little map, and that lead us right to the funeral we had seen. The funeral was for Stevie's Mother. If I'd taken a closer look during the wander, I would probably have recognized Jimmie Vaughan.
Vaughan Estate is a little plot near the middle of the cemetery. There were a few picks, I left mine, I told my friend about the quote on the marker from one of Stevie's songs. People had left various things to decorate the area; a fake bird in a nearby branch was kind of deteriorated, but it may have been there for almost twenty years now, what looked kind of like a fishing lure, and a horseshoe(?).
It doesn't seem like Stevie has been gone that long.
He sure could play guitar.

There's Weather Here

I went to Bible study last night (Wed) where I play guitar each week. I'd just finished tuning up and chosen my songs when we were told that the tornado sirens were going.
3 of us did what any real man would do in the situation; we went outside into the parking lot to look around.I'd never heard real tornado sirens before and wanted to hear if they sounded anything like the old air-raid sirens they used to blow on Mondays at noon in San Diego in the 60s.
They were different; just a high pitched whine, not the ascending/descending sound you always hear in old movies.Having grown up in San Diego, I assumed tornadoes were kind of like earthquakes; yeah they could kill you, but most of the time you just ignored them.
About 20 of us gathered in a stairwell of the church and chatted for around an hour till we got the all-clear. It kind of reminded me of the church scene in "War of the Worlds", but without the big finish. If you're going to be caught in a natural disaster, what better place to be?
Right now it's 10:35 am Thursday and outside it looks like it's 10 at night, lightning about every 7 seconds or so.
thunder that is close, very loud, and sounds like trucks falling from the sky... cool.
I love this place.

A Year in Texas

Well, it's been a year in Texas -other than a few hours spent browsing around Turner Falls in Oklahoma. Of the two dozen people who made the trip out from San Diego,
one has been fired, at least two have become pregnant, and one has died. I make a point of not querying him in my I.M. at work so I won't get the message that he's not found
-thereby removing him from my list of contacts.

Here are some of the past year's highlights;
*July 3rd, went to a "hanger party" at Addison airport for fireworks and a skyshow featuring WWII aircraftand a wing-walker, also, there I saw a Shelby Cobra autographed (in silver Sharpie) on the glovebox by Carroll Shelby.

*Day trip to Turner Falls

*Trap shooting on a Saturday morning with about 10 other people... yeehaw.

*A visit to Dallas World Aquarium

*Ft Worth Botanical Gardens

*The Plano Hot Air Balloon Festival

*Browsing around local parks scouting hiking trails

*Hiking around Dino Valley

*King Tut Exhibit @ Dallas Museum of Art

* A day at Ft Worth Stockyards

*Dallas Guitar Show... so many wonderful toys!

*Plane spotting at the local airports.

*Christmas at the mall with the (aprx) 70' tall Christmas tree

*Church picnics here rock; everyone bring their "secret weapon" best dish

-Some of the highlights I've blogged about, some I plan to blog about in the near future
Here are some of the things I miss most about San Diego;
*My friends and family

*Poker parties on Dr Flannery's yatch

*Access to the ocean/San Diego Bay

*knowing a good mechanic and planning to make my car maintenance an all day thing.

Dallas is a very nice place to live. It's a little hot in the Summer, a little cold in the Winter,but Fall and Spring are awesome here.
I still wear my Padres jersey to work, but I'm sure that if I had started out in Dallas and moved to San Diego, I'd miss Dallas as much as I miss San Diego now.

By the Way, the picture is of the Fort Worth Opera House.