Observations outside your element

I am guessing my dog would want to go somewhere cold. My Mom always questions the fact that he is an Australian Shepard and loves the cold. I tried to explain the lineage, but it reminded me of distant days of trying to explain Anthropology; let alone Australopithecus. I recall, there was a blank look just like the landscape of the snow rippled tundra that my dog craves to visit.

We are in the South now and, he might have forgotten the sound of the radiators performing their tea kettle overture in the North Eastern icicle morning?  I wonder, “Does he miss the feel of Vermont winter wooden floors aligned like an old man’s teeth? Those sweet spots above the furnace where the heat flows upward, atop the stair, behind my chair?”

He was raised in upstate New York. and now is sleeping beneath my Florida based flamingo socks. Must admit, dogs have good taste when it comes to socks. Seriously, he picked them out on Amazon. I had to turn of the One-Click to buy feature. That’s another story altogether.

For now, let’s see if he has good taste in vacation spots for this time of year.  We’ll put together a short list for the post tomorrow. Hopefully, we are still speaking after the collaborative effort.

Good evening,

CT and Pixel

Hot off the wire. “Do not eat cookie dough.” It seems like common sense but the local news just reported it. I love living in different cities.  Local news is mostly background noise, but there are gems.

Back when I was an archeologist I was in traveling across the US for six years, going hotel to hotel for contract work. Of course, the TV is the first thing you check in a hotel. Whatever the case may be, local news is a necessity.

Watching the local news was the first thing any good archeologist would do. Most importantly, the weather maps. Sure, 90% of the crew was looking for rain, and a reason not to work the next day. The other 10% were wondering what happens to the site when it rains.

More to the point, what has happened over the course of thousands of years when it had rained. Especially, when it is raining like it is now; steady, flowing quickly through the karst topography, funneling faster in the canyon creeks, exposing red clay and making bridges impassible.

The first time I watched the local news in Austin, after moving from New Orleans, I remember that it was such a quaint story. It isn’t Rome, New York, Chicago type news. It was Texas and they were serious.

Apparently, three guys were coming home from a toga party and decided to cross a low spot in the river. There is a reason the nice lady was saying “Turn Around Don’t Drown”. Their mugs shots were blazed in my mind. The lesson was real. Never wear a white toga when crossing a river in a Texan thunderstorm in the Hill Country with no cell phone. 

Note to self. If wearing a toga always carry your cell phone.