So the birds started using the bird feeder with the improvements I over-engineered into it. But I could barely see the huge flock of trash birds that were eating about $0.75 a day of perfectly good seed.
So I moved the birdfeeder up to the back window.
Those trash birds are kinda cute up close.
Although there is some worry that the rock I’m using as a counter-weight is going to smash through the back window. Which would drive up the cost of feeding trash birds even further.
At the nether-regions of Congress Avenue, there’s a Mexican restaurant called El Borrego del Oro, or "The Golden Ram." It had some decently priced gorditas (or "little fatties", yes I am a Spanish genius). They came half-wrapped in paper as if they were hamburgers from a car-hop.
I seem to recall that these were lengua and chicharron.
At a Sunday morning breakfast at Mi Madre’s (which I always want to call "Mis Madres," Spanish genius, remember?) I had their burrito that came with the creamy green salsa. Can you tell what is particularly special about this burrito?
It’s filled with French fries.
In a similar vein, maybe you can figure out what makes this bowl of noodles from Thai Noodle house so special.
It’s garnished with potato chips!
The Maru Japanese restaurant on Burnet has an appetizer called the J-bomb. A deep-fried ball of tuna and cream cheese.
Here’s a taco cart that I’ve been meaning to visit for a while. It’s behind the Target in Capital Plaza. The name is El Zapatista.
I should have got a picture of the zapatista rebel painted on the side of the cart.
When I was in Leander I picked up some snacks from the Mexican grocery. These Obleas are a little like communion wafers that are stuffed with goat-milk caramel.
There’s nothing like a candy that tastes a little like a goat smells.
Also from Leander, this Kranky.
They’re like Whoppers that someone sat on. Do you get a cognitive dissonance from the cheerfulness of the Kranky ‘K?’
I read that you can train your immune system to ignore food allergies. It just takes a small dose of the allergen on a regular basis. That’s why I got this powdered shrimp.
I’ve been putting a quarter of a teaspoon in apple sauce. Within a year I’ll be eating whatever shrimp are left after BP is done with them.
Julia (my food-frakking deputy) and I ate at this East Side place called Blue Dahlia. After looking at the menu, I ordered a roast beef sandwich. The menu listed a number of items that sounded very much like ordinary sandwiches, but they were called "tartines." I thought this was just some weird French word for sandwich. Apparently there was more to it than that.
I guess you could call it an open-faced sandwich? I could have slapped the open-faces together and made two sandwiches out of it, but I gave the tartines a chance. Even though they were totally just open-faced sandwiches. You will also notice that there is a little cup of grapes on the side. Julia had an actual sprig of grapes on her plate. I suspect that mine were in a cup because they came from the bottom of the bag.
I ate at the new dim sum restaurant. It’s a little odd to have a dim sum restaurant that does nothing else. Dim sum is supposed to be something that is infrequent and hard to find. You need to be in the know, otherwise it’s just a bunch of appetizers. This place had hardly any customers while I was there, which is a shame because it was pretty good.
The rolls and dumplings were steaming hot and tasty. I liked how I had to open a scorching hot bamboo container to find an extra set of dumplings.
It was a little like getting a present.
Jeremiah invited me over for chili the other day. He made the chili by stewing the meat in coffee.
My own contribution to the dinner was Korean popsicles. The outside layer was a green-tea icecream, and on the inside was sweetened red beans and crunchy chunks of ice. Yes, actual ice, like someone had taken a hammer to a sweetened ice-cube.
Jeremiah seemed to like it.
Another pair of visitors to the porch light the other night.
I presume the smaller of the two walking sticks is the male. Sadly, the picture doesn’t convey the scale. Taken together, the happy couple is about the size of a child’s hand.
For those few of you who have read my unpublished novel, I have always imagined Sagan the walking stick to look something like this. Only taller, skinnier, and far more high.
Just now I was standing next to the mixer here at the bakery, making streusel (or as it is pronounced and spelled here in Texas, "strizel"). As the paddle kicked up the sugar and flour, it reminded me of this home science experiment I did as a kid.
The experiment goes like this: you drill a hole at the bottom of an old coffee can, attach a length of hose and fill the can one-eighth of the way with flour. Then you put a lit candle on top of the flour, put on the lid, and blow through the hose. The flour kicks up into a cloud, the candle lights off the particles of flour, and each particle lights off the particles next to it and the result is the lid of the can explodes off.
It’s called a dust explosion and it’s the same principle that blows up grain elevators and causes the flash points of burning houses.
As the paddle kicked up the strizel, I thought to myself that there was enough dust in the air from the fifteen pounds of ingredients that it might actually be dense enough to cause an explosion.
I actually had my lighter in my hand before the part of my brain that does cost-benefit calculations kicked in (one: nothing happens, two: I blow up).
Maybe I’m not getting enough sleep.
The person who adopted the parakeet reported that it has already died. Which is too bad, but I’m glad that it wassn’t my responsibility.
In the meantime, I figured that I could probably have the benefit of birds around, but without all the responsibility, just by putting up a bird feeder.
Which I did. But there were two things I noticed. One, only trash birds go to the damn thing. I think I’ve seen as many grackles, mourning doves, and sparrows as I ever need. My housemate says there’s another kind of bird she’s seen out there, but the description is suspiciously similar to a starling.
But there’s nothing I can do about all that.
The second thing I noticed, and something that I can do something about, is the size of the bird feeder’s perch. It’s such a narrow ledge, that the mourning doves are too fat to sit on it and reach the seed. Instead they jump on top of the feeder and bump around until the seed falls on the ground, where it is apparently being devoured largely by opossums.
To remedy this second situation I have tied a stick to the bottom of the feeder.
And because the stick makes the bird feeder more unbalanced, I figured I should tie a rock to the bottom to keep it from tipping and spilling out all the seed. (you might remember the rock from the creek aquarium)
Maybe there are some things that don’t need too much engineering. But it didn’t take long to do, and it didn’t cost any money, so I’m not apologizing.
This morning, I woke up at 6am so I could take the train to Leander. As I may have mentioned on this blog before, the MetroRail Red Line only runs during rush hour. And there is only one train that goes all the way to Leander in the morning and one in the evening. So if you take the early train to the end of the line, then you’re stuck in Leander until evening.
Today I did this. In fact, I am writing these words RIGHT NOW while riding back to civilization.
I will now share with you some of the things I saw on this fantastic journey, beginning at 6:58am.
What does that mean?
I got a seat with a table, then I setup my laptop and perused the web for suggestions of things to see in Leander.
The wifi was a tad slow, but it worked okay. The web however, did not have much to say about sightseeing in Leander.
The suckers driving cars were not in gridlock. Dammit.
I would have preferred laughing at them.
I must have seen a dozen deer on the way up. None of the turkeys that other bloggers have professed to have seen, but the deer were impressive enough. There were bucks with antlers still fuzzy with the spring velvet, and many, many doe.
Stepping off at the Leander station was like entering the end of the world.
It felt a little like when I was in Europe and I stepped off the train to an unfamiliar city, my presence unremarked and unnoticed by people living their daily routine.
There was a building nearby that I thought might have rest rooms, but it only had the saddest break room in the whole world.
And a little cardboard train.
The best thing to come out of Leander is the Leanderthal woman. She’s was a 30-year-old hunter of mega-sized bison who died 10,000 years ago.
The marker is a few blocks from the station.
Leander City Hall! This is where the excitement is!
Then I stopped at Moody’s for some chicken and waffles.
Crunchy and syrupy.
According to everything I’ve read, Baghdad Cemetary in Leander is where they did the filming of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Doesn’t this look like a defiled graveyard?
Actually, I think it’s kind of cute the way the gravestones are leaning up together, like they’re buddies or in love.
At a waterpark/sport facility at the edge of town there’s a bulldozered hill that’s easily the tallest point in town.
I think they made it just so that joggers will have something to run up.
Then I spent five hours at the Leander public library, stealing their wifi and doing work.
The library is located conveniently on a major arterial road with no sidewalks. That way it’s virtually impossible to reach it by foot, and hair-raising to get there by bike.
A typical Leander street with tract housing and no one in sight.
This was the only park I saw in Leander.
At Jardin Del Rey, a Pipian Enchilada, chicken with pumpkin sauce.
It was quite moist and delicious.
Then, because I had an hour and a half to kill, I biked down a narrow Ranch to Market road, with cars and dump trucks whizzing by me, in order to see the mass grave of the Webster party massacre.
They were all killed by Comanches, except for some women and children.
The Leander HEB is like a super-HEB and a Target and a WalMart all rolled into one. They even had an electronics section!
That would explain why the only retail I saw in town was a Goodwill used book store and the library used book store (open for three hours on Saturday).
My recent sale of the story The Secret of Pogopolis to Beneath Ceaseless Skies qualified me for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Now, it’s clear to anyone with even a cursory familiarity with my work that I don’t deserve to win the Campbell. I didn’t deserve to win the best story of Innsmouth Free Press either, yet through crass self-promotion and your help, I did.
That’s why I’m announcing my campaign to become the least deserving winner of the Campbell in history. To kick off the campaign I would like to share with you some quotes about my work that will drive home just how undeserving I am:
"High on the profanity factor, this story isn’t for everyone. . . Even if you are a pervert."
———-The Fix Online, about Gimpbomb Enters Room
"I’m sorry, I just don’t get it . . . There’s no magic anywhere in sight. . . it came across as an amateurish, slapped-together bit of nonsense."
———-Tangent Online, about Murder at Doty Station
"Nothing in Vampire mythology that I’ve read would ever suggest that they would take on a serious fight without serious reason. . . to have this serious, this intense of a fight, there needed to be a better reason than just a shirt."
———-tbaker2500, about The Elves Hate You
"A lame groin joke never makes a good ending to a story, IMHO."
———-vburn, about Eggs
"This ‘writer’ has clearly never had a real relationship, nor a real conversation. . . Was this seriously the best thing in the slush pile?"
———-Unregistered Guest, about The Secret of Pogopolis
"You smell."
———-Sharyn November, about Matthew Bey in general
I have about three pages of similar quotes up on Matthewbey.com, so go ahead and check them out. There’ll be more info on how to nominate me (and RevolutionSF.com while you’re at it) as it becomes possible to do so. Eligible voters will have memberships to Aussiecon or Renovation, so start working on that.
Despite the danger this will become an all-animal-pictures blog…
I stopped at a bridge over Waller Creek to look at the fish (a healthy population of mosquitofish), when I heard someone ask, "Mehr?" When the question was repeated several times, I looked down and found a very friendly, yet oddly shaven cat.
Then later that night, I cut through a parking lot near Highland Mall and saw something that looked like a wad of trash fluttering in the wind. On closer inspection it was a baby mothra.
Yep, I’ve got nothing better to do than pet cats and look at moths.
