But not to be outdone by a couple of deer in heat, I offer you a glimpse of an occasional visitor on the railing of our deck. I know it is hard to tell but this thing was at least two or three feet tall*. Scared the bejesus out of me when I nearly shook hands with it.
First, in case you read the Blog but didn't know, sometimes, people leave comments about what I have posted. You can click on the little comments button (circled) and read what others have posted.
This is what it looks like when people leave comments. If you notice, someone has left a comment anonymously. That is fine - you don't have to leave your name, though it is always nice to try to follow who is who (so if you leave lots of comments, we know it is the same person). You'll notice in the second comment, it is me responding. Since I have a Google account, I can comment on my blog or other blogs I visit, and people will see my name and handsome picture.
If you don't have a Google or Wordpress or other type of blogging account, just click on the Anonymous button at the bottom and feel free to comment. If you'd like, you can simply sign your name, but not necessary. And there you have it; comments in a nutshell!
My wife and I ate at a Joe's in Louisiana and two regular readers pointed me to the Joe's on Culebra. The two restaurants are not related (turns out, there is more than one Italian guy named Joe), This is a great deal on a large Dominos pizza for $8.99 to benefit the Alamo Breast Cancer Foundation (I'm a member and survivor.) Please distribute as you see fit. Dates Oct 26-29 at any area Dominos...must order online at www.dominos.com with code 8300! Large pizza up to 8 toppings, they say you can use the code for as many as you want.
Lee says, "I was behind this Toyota on Grissom waiting patiently to turn left at the light on to Culebra, then followed him down until I stopped at Frost Bank. Looks like an old piece of fire hose and a couple of scrubbies. Can't imagine what it was supposed to represent, right?"
You can look at the pictures and see for yourself.
But if you take the time to add the name Wing Street to a place called Pizza Hut, now I am forced to try not only the pizza, but also the wings. Is there a cardiologist in the house?
And of course, as promised, my wife and I are attempting to use the Entertainment Book coupons everywhere we dine now, and it just so happens that we had a coupon for a free order of cheesy bread sticks (or whatever the Pizza Hut name for them is) as well as a pitcher of soda.
The place is sparkly and new. I originally thought that it was smaller, but come to find out, it takes up half of the new building built in front of Stacy's Sports Bar on Grissom. I like the set-up inside. Very modern sports bar look with flat panels everywhere and a serious Texas and San Antonio theme.
I'll keep this short. Using our coupon, we got the bread stick things. They are so good that you just can't help but want to eat all of them before your pizza arrives. But we didn't. Instead, I think we ate one each and if I am correct, they are sitting in my refrigerator next to the microwave as we speak.
I had to order the wings mild so my wife could try them. She no-likey the hot stuff. I thought the wings were excellent - not overcooked as some tend to be, and they were nice and meaty. I think it was $6.99 for 10 of them, and with the little tub of Ranch dressing, I thought the price was fair.
Our coupon for the free bread sticks stipulated that we had to purchase the large pizza as opposed to a medium (They don't have small). The large is what I suspect a medium was back in the day. Don't get me wrong, it isn't that there wasn't way more than enough for two, even four people, but I'm just telling you, it is smaller than I recall.
I give you the stylish, somewhat green Chevrolet Impala complete with 4X55 Air Conditioning (or in the case of Culebra Road north of Loop 410, 4X 25 A/C). You have to appreciate those older Impalas with the huge trunk. Hell, I suspect you could carry a near household of items in that trunk.
But you know you are living large when you have to put the rest of your stuff in the back seat. Nope. No $4,500 in stimulus would get this shrewed car collector to give up on this baby. 
No big deal to me at all. If these people drive by my house, they will see that I have a US flag as well as a Texas state flag. Call us a little over-patriotic, but we just like to fly both of them.
Anyway, as we were hitting some garage sales today, my wife pointed out to me that the people who live across the street from the Mexican flag family are apparently flying the US flag a bit prouder. Good for them.
This year, the Grand Marshal was District 6 Councilman Ray Lopez, seen here riding in the Corvette of Robert Rodkey. In addition to Robert's 'vette, there were 8 or 9 other Corvette's from the local owners club.
Members of the San Antonio Fire Department were quite a hit with youngsters along the parade route. And of course, members of the San Antonio Police Department were out in force to direct traffic and make sure the parade travelled smoothly down the road.
The parade had numerous groups from the local Northwest Vikings youth football team to the Boy Scouts.
Bear with me on this. Our zip code is 78250 (or The Five Oh for short). Next, you think back to the old Hawaii Five-O TV show, and the fact that most of the streets in our neighborhood start with the word "Timber", and the next thing you know, we are in Hawaiian shirts, palm trees and we are Timber Five-O. I know, it really is a stretch, but we had fun anyway.
And in spite of the record 103 degree temperature, many people found enough shade needed to keep cool and lined the parade route and enjoyed the spectacle of it all.
I know, there is a large population outside the great state of Texas who would find it hard to believe that this is not how we all travel - when we aren't riding our horses to the General Store to get some more branding iron fluid. But trust me, this is not your typical daily driver, even in 78250.
You know, they are passing laws about distracted driving due to cell phone usage. What about this dash board? I fully expected to see several cats curled up napping on the dash, (click the image to enlarge) but perhaps the color would be even too distracting for that.
Oh, and my wife wants me to call this company for our own backyard. These people come out and pick up the dog crap that you (or in this case I) am to lazy to scoop up. I just love the use of of the little slogans. Instead of the UPS slogan of "What can Brown do for you?"; these guys say, "What can we doo for brown?" And of course they have modified an old plumbing slogan and changed it to, "Your dog's "Biscuits" are our bread and butter!"On 1/2/09 @ 1315, an unidentified resident arrived at the office and said he had seen a strange looking animal. He pointed toward the Timberwilde school parking lot and I saw a dog like animal. The animal had gray skin with a small bit of light colored hair on it's rump and was as big as a medium sized dog. The animal crossed the street and went into the green belt behind the Lodge. I went to the soccer field and drove into the greenbelt keeping the animal in sight. The animal stopped and ate a squirrel; at this time I saw a resident and his son in the green belt. I went to alert them of the animal coming their way. The animal then ran towards Timber Cross and disappeared. The animal looked like the animal that was shot and killed in South Texas and said to be a Chupacabra. End of report.
I only mention this because, aside from my wife and I, and the Directors at the meeting, there were only a hand full (and I really mean, a single hand full) of other residents at the town hall meeting. And of course, I recognized them from the small group that attends the board meetings.
Just like that, the holes are covered and things seem to have come to a stop.I was told, third hand, that the construction in the parking lot over there at Grissom & Timber Path, was a massive screw-up. Supposedly the construction folks showed up one day, start digging up the parking lot for a new Pizza Hut, and found out later they were in the wrong shopping center. Is it true? Time will tell.
Who knows? You know how these urban legends get started. But the really strange thing is, literally across the street from this little construction mess is, yep, you guessed it, a Pizza Hut! You have to wonder how many times the construction workers took a break for lunch and wandered in for the noon buffet and never made the connection.
You may recall that my wife and I started a little project to convert a small part of our yard on one side of the house to a little area with plants and ground cover. With that finished off - well, all but the actual growing of the ground cover and plants we planted, we decided to add a small deck off of the larger deck.
Because of the slope, I had to dig in some deck blocks on one side just so the deck wouldn't be too high off the ground. I'm not afraid of heights or anything, but I'm pretty sure my neighbors wouldn't care to have us hovering over their backyard like we were in a deer blind or watchtower.
Setting the clocks back an hour is cool if you don't want to send your kids to school in the dark, but it really takes a toll on the amount of daylight after work. So adding in daily trips to Home Depot after work, I could just feel the daylight burning away, taking away the precious time I needed to work on this deck. Maybe I should have done this a few weeks ago.
So we decided on a 12 x 10 deck so I wouldn't have to cut the boards to fit. It only took an hour or so to get the thing set in place where we wanted it, but then I used the next two evenings going really overboard on making the frame sturdy. I probably could have put more into it like pouring some cement footings or something, but by the time I was done with it, I had 4 x 4's holding up just about every board. Let's just say, it doesn't creak at all.
Next came the fairly easy part, actually putting on the deck. I decided to go with treated 2 x 6's even though there are newer decking products available - either the new plastic decorative systems or even the 5/8"s deck boards. Our original deck is made of 2 x 6, so I went with that.
By Thursday, all I needed to do was to finish putting in the last two 2 x 6's so the deck part would be complete. Unfortunately, you need to have the right tools for the job. As the frame was going up, we decided we would have a small bench on the far end of the deck to serve as a railing (we wouldn't want anyone to get liquored up and fall a full 16 inches to their death) and also as a place to set drinks or plants and such. Well, I needed to notch out the deck boards so as to fit comfortably around the 4x4 risers. I went to grab my jig saw, and sure enough - no blade.
I'm sure Bob Vila would be horrified to know that instead of running out to Home Depot to buy new blades, I grabbed my trusty saws-all and commenced in he-man Tim the Toolman Taylor fashion to screw it up. I gave up after a few minutes and decided the project could wait until I had some new jigsaw blades. In the end, I made the cuts using my circular saw and cleaned them up with the freshly bladed jig saw. Norm Abram would be proud.
As the deck was starting to come together, we also decided to extend the walkway of decayed granite we made around the garden project. So on Thursday, my wife went back to Fertile Gardens and bought another yard of the stuff and on Friday, I went and picked up the second half of it. So basically, I decided to get up Saturday and just knock it out.
With the deck top complete, I needed to clean things up a bit by replacing a board that was all jacked-up and adding some trim.
Because our area is home to lots of wild skunks, possums, raccoons and feral cats, I wanted to cover the sides of the deck right away so nobody would get the idea that they could get under there and have a littler of babies. And I think it makes the whole thing look a little nicer. I just used fence boards to make the siding. I can honestly tell you, this was probably the hardest part of the project - the constant bending over to measure then getting up to make the cut, then back over to nail it in. Make no mistake, my knees and back are feeling it.
We finished adding in the decayed granite to make a small walkway from the bigger deck down to the new one, and we still have a lot of tamping to do, but that can wait.
In the end, we added one of those little fire pit deals so my wife could roast wienies and marshmallows. I think we are going to put in some sautillio tile in the center of the deck to place the fire pit on, though on our inaugural use, we didn't burn anything down.
And there you have it: pictures of my little deck. I know, I giggled too. It's okay.
