Reading Again

For the longest time, I hadn't read a book.  There were several reasons why - my eyesight isn't as good as it used to be and my eyes grow tired more quickly;  I've also not read books as much as I did before I first got a computer.  I still read, but it's mostly news articles and forum posts and comments. 

It's also been hard for me to find something to hold my interest.  I've always enjoyed good fiction, but I haven't checked many books out of the library that engaged me. Most of the time I start them, then simply cannot finish. I then forget about them and have to pay a late fee because I forget to take them back. I never minded paying for an overdue book if I enjoyed it, but I hate to pay a fine for a book I didn't read, much less one I didn't even like.

I was at the library the other day to pick up some tax forms and decided to peruse the new releases.  I saw the newest Stephen King novel 11/22/63 and reading the flyleaf, decided I wanted to give it a go. (WARNING:  Spoilers at the Wiki link)

I can barely put it down, it's so good.  The book is about an English teacher who is teaching a GED class and reads a horrifying essay by the school janitor, an account of his father murdering his entire family and nearly killing him as well back in 1958. The teacher is emotionally moved by the tale but then gets the largest shock of his life;  a friend who owns a diner shows him a time portal in the diner's pantry that leads to 1958.  The teacher is urged by the diner owner to go back in time and try to change history, namely to stop the assassination of JFK.  He decides to take on the task, but also thinks that the portal goes back to '58 because he is supposed to stop the massacre of the janitor's family.

I'm at the point of the book where he's been back in time for a few weeks.  The storyline is derivative of most time travel tales, namely the sci-fi question: If you go back in time, can the future be changed?  That question seems to be cleverly answered so far, but I'm anxious to see what will happen. I expect there will be several twists and turns along the way.

So far, the novel seems to be one of King's better efforts, especially of the last 10-15 yrs. (I haven't liked much of anything he's done over that time, but that's just a personal opinion) He does a great job of bringing the characters to life and adds in some bits of humor.  The account of a much simpler time in the late 50's is also appealing. If I have a gripe so far, it's that he interjects his own personal politics a bit too much, but it's not anything too annoying.

Think I'll get off of here, go kick back and read some more.  I haven't been this enthused about a book in years.

A Slice of Life

Quite a few years ago, I was roughnecking for one of my best friends. Besides me and the driller, the rest of the crew consisted of my friend's brother-in-law and a guy who I knew, but not very well. I knew his family, though, because his dad had worked for my grandfather in the oil field.   For the life of me, I can't remember the guy's name...but that's not important for this story.  I'm sure he would want to remain anonymous and I can't say as I'd blame him.

We worked nights - morning tour (pronounced "tower") and on the way home, the guy, like many of the guys I worked with, liked to drink beer.  Before you gag, remember that night shift workers have their days turned around and 7:00 a.m. is like 5:00 p.m. to everyone else.   I've never been much of a drinker and especially when I worked that shift.  Drinking upsets my sleep and it's hard enough getting rest during the day, what with the usual daytime noises.

The guy whose family I knew liked to drink any chance he got, though, and that morning when he cracked open his first beer I got the impression that he had started drinking even before the shift was over. (really stupid thing to do on a drilling rig - they're dangerous places to work even when you have all your senses about you)  By the time we dropped him off, he was sloshing drunk.  We watched him stagger up the sidewalk to his front door and as we drove off, made wisecracks about his wife being angry with him and hoping he wouldn't have a hangover that night at work.

The day passed, I got what rest I could trying to sleep during the day and when my boss picked me up, we headed straight on to work without picking up the guy.  I asked where he was and was told his wife had called and said he couldn't make it, that earlier he had suffered an accident at home and had been forced to go to the emergency room.

We guessed at what had happened - his wife had hit him with a frying pan when he came in drunk, he had slipped in the shower or maybe he had continued his drinking when he got home and was just too drunk to go to work and the ER story was just an excuse to keep from being fired.  Even though we were short-handed, we thankfully got through the shift without too much trouble.  Another day went by and it was time to go to work again. This time, however, the guy was ready to go to work and on the way to the rig, told us why he had missed the previous night.

"I was really drunk when I got home." he started his story with an obvious fact.  "My old lady woke up when I fell down in the living room and gave me hell for a while." (That was something else we had figured would happen, duh.) He went on: "I really needed to pee, so I went into the bathroom and started peein' like a Russian racehorse when I noticed a loose thread hanging from my fly.  I pulled on the thread but it wouldn't come loose.  There was a piece of broken mirror on the toilet lid (probably the result of a previous drunken episode, I thought) so I picked up the jagged glass and slashed at the thread."

Get the picture?  Do I need to spell it out for you?  I don't think I will.  When we got out to the rig and started changing clothes, he showed us his injury.  It was close to the top of "it" and had required 27 stitches to close. 

Made me cringe then, makes me cringe now.  There's a moral to the story, but you can supply your own, I'd wager.

I quit that job after a while, then a few months later I came back to work for my friend.  In that time, the guy had also quit and and had also come back to work on the rig, but on a different shift.  We passed by an ambulance on the way to work and nervously hoped it wasn't coming from our rig....but it was.  The injured party was the same guy!  He had to go up in the derrick and must have been semi-drunk when he did because he forgot to put on his safety belt and fell out.  He slowed his fall some by grabbing onto a cable but still hit hard enough to break several bones.  That was lucky - in a way - but even though he didn't hit as hard as he could have, he landed a-straddle the drawworks guard.  He managed to avoid crushing "anything important", but he was split from his rectum to nearly his belly button.  That makes me cringe even worse than thinking about his other injury.

That's not really funny, not unless you have a sadistic sense of humor.  Maybe I do have a sadistic sense of humor because it reminds me of an old joke:

Johnny's mother sent him to the store for a loaf of bread.  He was walking home, the loaf of bread under one arm and the hand of his free arm stuck deep in his pocket, when he bumped into the pastor of his church.

"Afternoon, Johnny!" said the preacher. "I see you have the staff of life in one hand;  what do you have in the other?"

"Oh," sheepishly replied Johnny. "That's a loaf of bread."

NASCAR Self-Driving Car

Well, they DO have a self-driving car, but I'm sure this is their annual April Fool's hoax.

Bringing self-driving cars to NASCAR | Official Google Blog

They started early with an 8-bit thing in Google Maps.

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Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever.
 - Charles Lamb

Big Change for ToTG

No, not an early April Fool's joke. Just a tiny exaggeration. Tiny is right.

A while back, I noticed Blogger had introduced the ability to add a favicon to blogs. I kept meaning to create one and upload it, but kept forgetting until last night. I tried several different ones, but finally settled on the shape of Texas in the ToTG logo.  I also didn't like the white square on the blue-ish grey background on my Firefox browser, but when I made the white  transparent, it made the entire thing almost invisible. 

A webmaster I'm not. (nor a graphics artist or a decent blogger, but....)

For some reason it doesn't change from the orange "B" Blogger one in my bookmarks menu.  (and I've deleted the old bookmark, cleared cache and cookies but still no-go)

Anyway, did you notice?  What do you think?

A Rare Medium Well Done

So says the PBS fundraisers.  I wouldn't disagree - although I really don't like tax money funding the channel - but they have dropped the ball, particularly at the local PBS station, KACV.

As many of you know, I enjoy collecting recipes and watching most Food Network programming. One Saturday a few months ago, I noticed a show on PBS called America's Test Kitchen, immediately followed by another program called Cook's Country from America's Test Kitchen. (Official website)

I immediately fell in love with both shows. They appealed to the food geek in me, ala Alton Brown and his Good Eats show, plus the recipes were not complicated and were usually improvements on classic, every day dishes. They also do blind taste tests on various ingredients as well as review useful kitchen appliances. The host, Christopher Kimball, is likeable and entertaining and doesn't take himself too seriously. I also enjoy the recipe adaptations by several of the female contributors.(They don't show cleavage like some of the female Food Network show hosts nor or they as attractive, but they're cute and seem more "real" than does Giada De Laurentiis. They're certainly not anywhere near as annoying as Rachael Ray. That said, Claire Robinson and Nigella Lawson and a couple other female FN show hosts could boil water every week and I'd watch.  Hey, I may appreciate good cooking, but if there's also a pretty face involved...that's a bonus, like finding two yolks in an egg)

I was a little annoyed last week when they showed only one of the Test Kitchen shows and I was hoping that wouldn't be permanent. The programming before the cooking shows consists of cartoons and sewing/quilting/crafting shows. That's fine, I'm glad - if I have to pay for it - that there are programs that appeal to everyone, but I didn't want anything to preempt my shows. After my new-found favorite shows are how-to and home improvement shows, another with a guy who makes crude, new things with crude, old tools followed by a boring car show or two and then Lawrence Welk reruns to round off the afternoon. Yuk.

No, I want my America's Test Kitchen shows, at least one of 'em!!!

Instead, they aired a rerun of Back to the Table with Chef Bud, a poorly done cooking show with an Amarillo area chef. Now, I watched his first two shows because they had been heavily promoted and I wanted to see if it was any good.

It wasn't. Judge for yourself.




It's not horrible...but it's not good, either. Part of the fault with my finding fault is that I'm used to the professional production of FN shows and the likeable hosts. Since we can't smell or taste the food they're cooking, personality plays a huge part in a cooking show's appeal. Maybe the show will get better with future episodes, and I'm sure Chef Bud is a good cook, but it lacks that certain "something", like not enough sage in Thanksgiving dressing or a rib-eye steak without salt. IOW, bland. The visuals aren't all that good, either.

I want my America's Test Kitchen shows back!

Happy Together - The Turtles