Russell to the Rescue

I’ve had many flat tires over the years.

On my first car, the 1974 Camaro, I burned a hole through the rubber trying to smoke the tires.

Thinking back, I can remember changing many a tire. When I was in college, I even had a blowout on 635, the LBJ Freeway here in Dallas. I pulled over and changed it right there on the highway. I’m lucky to be alive!

However, I haven’t had a flat in years. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that on my Trailblazer, while I know technically what has to be done to get the spare tire lowered, I don’t actually have any working knowledge about how to get the spare tire down from its little spare tire hideout.

Oh sure, I can work the jack and get the lug nuts off, and truth be known, given time and the opportunity, I could figure out the whole “tire lowering” thing.

But when it’s dark, and it’s raining, and you have a car full of loud ninth grade girls it is hard to have the mental skills necessary for that kind of mechanical problem solving. At least it is for me.

So you can imagine my shock and awe as my wife and I are driving our daughter and five of her friends home from Chili’s when we get a flat tire.

As it turns out, Russell, the dad of one of the girls, hops in his truck and comes to give me a hand. I was hoping Russell would at the very least have a flashlight, which he did. Russell also had a floor jack, a crossbar lug wrench, and he had a wealth of knowledge about how to lower the spare tire on a 2005 Chevrolet Trailblazer…. Go figure!

In the end the tire got changed, no girls got injured or even wet and I didn’t even get all that dirty. (Only because I let Russell do most of the work. After all, they were his tools!)

Yep, I’ve had many flat tires over the years.

Maybe next time I’ll be a little bit more like Russell...

First White Christmas

I’m 45 years old and I have never experienced a white Christmas…

that is until this year!

While it didn’t actually snow on Christmas day, it did snow Christmas Eve, and we did have snow on the ground on Christmas morning.

And baby, in my book that’s a white Christmas!

I got some pretty impressive pictures on both Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

See what you think.

So was my Christmas White?

You be the judge!

Funny Man

When you’re a guy who like to be funny, and you’re around people on a daily basis who think you are hilarious…well baby, you’ve got it made!

That’s how it is for me every single day. At least, that is, until summer vacation.

Never mind my audience is a room full of nine and ten year olds who aren’t allowed to boo or walk out. If you’re keeping your audience (captive or not) in stitches it’s great for a comic’s ego.

Sure, the adults in the building think I’m funny too, at least the hip adults do, but they aren’t my core audience.

You see, my crowd has a fascination with cooties, nose picking and bodily functions. All I have to do is ask someone to quit picking their nose, and the room explodes with laughter. It doesn’t matter if this person was actually picking, because the room still falls apart.

Truth be known, it actually works better if he or she wasn’t engaged in the afore mentioned behavior, because their violent protests create even more giggles.

Yep, I may only be a teacher, but I’m livin’ the stand-up comedian’s dream…

Go Figure!

I realize that my postings were happening at a frequency of about one per month. Then suddenly, as if by magic, I blast out three postings in a week.

I'm not sure what's gotten into me...maybe it's the hair.

Go figure!

Shocking Results...

I was being the dutiful son-in-law and helping my mother-in-law hang her Christmas decorations. She didn’t have a lot of lights to hang, but it was a cold, drizzling day so I believe that will award me some extra jewels in my crown when I get to heaven.

“Don’t you mean IF you get to heaven,” I can hear people like K-Dog saying, but I just don’t listen to those people.

Anyway, I’m just about finished hanging the lights on the first part of the house, when I plug them in to see how I need to adjust the strands.

I noticed some haphazard spacing between a few of the rows of lights that’s on one of those prickly holly bushes. As I grab the lights I feel this sharp prick in my finger. Thinking it was just the holly bush I just ignored the pain and kept moving the lights.

That’s when I felt the jolt.

Now, the sensation you get from a jolt of electricity is not something new for me. I do enough “handy-man” type of work around my house that I’ve touch more than my fair share of live wires. I also worked with an electrician at Peacock Chevrolet in Houston while I was in high school. I made everyone in the shop laugh uncontrollably on several occasions when I was knocked on my butt after grabbing the coil wire of a car before turning off the engine.

As it turned out, there was a broken bulb on the cord that I didn’t see. When I grabbed the cord, my finger landed on the exposed negative and positive leads. This was only a 110 connection, so I wasn’t ever in any danger. If that was all that had happened I wouldn’t have thought twice about it and wouldn’t even be writing this post.

However, probably half an hour later, as I was driving home my iphone made an odd noise. I pulled it out and the message on the screen said, “No SIM Card.”

I was very puzzled, tried to use it and nothing. All my contacts where there and the games would play, but I couldn’t make calls.

After restarting the phone everything works again. No problems at all.

The only thing I can assume is that the shock somehow went through me into the phone and caused some kind of a glitch. I may find other problems later, but for now it’s business as usual.

I am, however, quite intrigued by being a human conductor. My class is just finishing up a unit in science on electricity and magnetism. I can’t wait to tell them about their teacher’s Christmas light adventure and its shocking results…

In Search of Neon

And so I’ve got this very creative friend…Let's just call him K-Dog.

K-Dog is forever pulling out some new thing he’s into that just exudes creativity. His latest thing is neon signs.

He told me about his fascination with neon a few months ago.

“What I do is find some cool, old neon sign, take a picture of it, and then I can digitally rebuild it. The whole process is really amazing!”

At first I was intrigued and curious. I like neon as much as the next guy, or at least I thought I did. Come to find out, K-Dog will research each sign to find out its history. He’ll know things like when and where it was made, when it was placed on the building and probably even the brand and size of boots worn by the workmen who installed it.

For some, like the signs on motel chains such as Holiday Inn, he tries to find out where any of the surviving neon signs might still be up and working.

K-Dog is a neon nut!

I’ve only seen a couple of his digital, neon re-creations, but I was blow away.

I know of two really cool neon signs here in Dallas that K-Dog hasn’t seen. One is pretty nice, the other one is really amazing. I’m not going to say anything more about them, because K-Dog and I are going to go on a Dallas Neon search sometime over the Christmas break. And since K-Dog is one of the few readers of my blog, I don’t want to give it away.

However, rest assured that I’ll post some before and after pictures of any of the neon signs we happen to find that K-Dog ends up rebuilding.

Long Hair

So I decided, back on March 5^th of 2009, to just let my hair grow. I’ve kind of had long hair before, but this time it’s different.

You see, before now, when I’ve had long hair, parts of my hair would be long (like the back for instance) but I’d keep the rest in check by getting it trimmed about once a month…or so. Now I don’t have any actual pictures of this, but rest assured it was in no way a mullet.

Anyway…

On March 5, 2009, I was getting my hair trimmed and I just decided to not go back for two months. Before I knew what was happening, two months turned into three and then into four.

By this time my hair had gone through several stages or phases. I would wake up one day and discover that I couldn’t get my hair to work right at all and that it was time to get it cut. However, after a week or two of procrastination, I would wake up and find that it was working again. Then, almost on schedule, a couple of weeks would go by and I’d be right back in the same “bad hair” dilemma I had been in only a few weeks ago. Once again I would fully intend to go get it trimmed, but just wouldn’t get around to going. And the “Good Hair/Bad Hair” thing would start all over again.

I began to find the whole “Good Hair –vs– Bad Hair” situation a wee-bit comical.

At this point I decided not to go to the barber for anything other than getting my sideburns trimmed until 2010. And that brings us to today. Having long hair has been a true learning experience for me. I've learned some valuable lessons that I couldn't have learned with my previous do.

Some of the things my long hair has taught me:

1. Washing long hair is nothing like washing short hair. I see now why my parents gave me a buzz-cut until the third grade.

2. If you have long hair, the wind is not always your friend.

3. If you’re a guy with long hair, people talk to you about art and other cool things like you actually know about them.

4. And if your boss asks you to cut your hair, this is sexual harassment. This never actually happened, it just occurred to me.

Over Thanksgiving, my family was walking to a little restaurant near my parents home when, due to the wind, my hair was being kind of funny. Luckily for me, my daughter captured it on film.

Check out Hugh’s funny hair pictures below.

Me trying not to laugh.

Me doing I don't know what...but looking rather dumb.

I don’t know how long I’m going to let it get…but I’ll keep you posted.