Whirlwind Week Report: And it isn't over...

I hope you can forgive my lack of exciting reporting coming from The Five-Oh in the past week or more but things have been quite hectic and rewarding on several fronts.

I shan't bore you with the Neighborhood Watch related issues that made big news, but I'll send you to this link regarding a tragic situation and leave it at that for the time being.

In other local neighborhood excitement, our board of directors (there are only four currently) figured out who would be the new Chair and vice-Chair. I'm not sure if it is public info or not, so I suppose we'll have to wait until the next meeting for the announcement. The really interesting thing to me is that one of our board members no longer lives in the neighborhood. In other words, someone who will not be impacted in any way by decisions of the board is helping (or in some cases, hindering) the things that impact me! I think that is wrong. What about you?

Okay, forget all that unpleasantness. So last night we were off to attend my son's commencement ceremony - he graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). Unlike many of his fellow graduates, he was on the 4-year plan as opposed to the apparently common 5, 6 and 7 year programs. You know, a lot of people go to college for seven years. I know, they're called doctors. Sorry.

Just as we were leaving the house, my daughter called and said that her flight from Philadelphia had been delayed and that now, she wouldn't be getting into San Antonio until Saturday AM instead of late Friday night. I know, you are probably asking yourself why I, as a good father, didn't volunteer to drive to Dallas, pick her and her husband up at DFW, then drive back to San Antonio? People, Texas is a big state. It would take me five and a half hours to get from my side of SA to DFW and and other five and a half hours to get back! And we still had to attend my son's graduation!

Luckily, she has a friend who lives just near the airport, so they got to have a nice visit and about 4 hours of sleep before taking a flight out this morning. Oh, and in case you are wondering, American Airlines didn't offer them a hotel room, or a pillow - and surely no coupon for a free flight or bag of peanuts.

But back to the graduation. This event was held at the UTSA Convocation Center. Not a bad place for a ceremony of this size.We are usually pretty good at picking out our kids from a crowd of people, but without binoculars or a telephoto lens, we spent most the ceremony fawning over some kid who looks like my son from half a mile away. I'm sure that kid will do well in life, but as soon as he got up to walk, we knew it wasn't our son. Bad posture. As it turned out, we were never in a position to see our son until he got up to walk to the stage. Perhaps that other young man's parents were in the audience and made the same mistake with our kid.

So, they have these things down to a science. The administration knows that you couldn't care less about the other 700 people graduating, you only care about your own kid. Speeches were short, there were no politically motivated anti-W comments and in general, once they started reading off names, it was like fine clock-work.

Unfortunately, they still go alphabetically, and with a last name starting with "S", we had a lot of waiting to do. And we did wait, very politely I might add. But funny, as the end of the commencement neared and as we began to get excited for our son (and apparently some kid who looked just like our son), we noticed that the people who have graduates with last names starting in the first half of the alphabet were starting to simply get up and leave.Hey, I don't care if you want to leave and not watch my kid graduate even though I gave a heartfelt golf-clap when your kid walked the stage, but please don't block my view of the stage as you exit your seat. How discourteous is that? And it wasn't one or two families. I'm talking half the place was emptying when there was literally ten minutes left.Well guess what suckers, when the commencement was over, UTSA brought out the Mariachis! How Purro San Antonio is that, to bust out orange sombrero wearing mariachis? And they were damn good. To all you people who left early - piss off!So it isn't over yet. My daughter and son-in-law got in this morning and shortly, we are off to my son's commissioning ceremony. I know a few of you have seen me around minus the mustache and goatee. I'm stuffing myself into my service dress uniform for the ceremony and had to shave to be in "regs". Hopefully there won't be a weigh-in. My daughter has come with her uniform and she will give my son his first official salute. Bust out your hankies.

We'll zip over to Florida shortly so my dad (who for medical reasons couldn't make it tonight) can slip into his uniform and provide another salute. As you might expect, our military family is pretty proud of our first officer in the family.

So, if I don't have more goofy pictures or updates on the latest restaurants for several more days or so, I hope you can understand. Maybe now is a good time to go back and read some of the older posts. You know you want to.

Day Trip Report: TSC, Castroville & Hondo

Though we live in what many consider to be a pretty crowded area, complete with occasional bouts of bumper to bumper traffic on the drive to and from work,one of the beautiful things about living close to the ever moving edge of town is that, in 15 minutes or less, we can be out in the middle of open country. And we like to take advantage of that.

You need only take a single flight between San Antonio and Dallas or San Antonio and Houston, and you can see just how wide open and unpopulated the state of Texas is. But sprinkled between the major cities are small little towns, each of them with their own interesting history and architecture worth exploring when you get a chance. Today, we headed West of San Antonio and hit three small towns: Castroville, Hondo and D'Hanis. This little adventure started because my wife wanted to go to the Tractor Supply Company.In case you aren't familiar with them, they are sort of an all purpose hardware store but with an emphasis on things you might need out in the country, on a farm or ranch. The have a slogan that goes something like, "The Stuff you Need Out Here" where "out here" is in the country or on a farm or a ranch or away from the city.But the main purpose of our going "Out Here" was so my wife could buy some toy animals.Yea, aside from all the farm implements you might need, TSC knows that country kids like country toys, including toy tractors, toy animals and the like. My wife needed some real farm animals, and specifically, a Texas Longhorn to complete her Christmas Manger set-up.So once we spent $120.00 on stuff I had no idea we were in the market for, we continued West on Hiway 90 into Castroville. I nearly shit myself with excitement when I passed a '72 Camaro just like mine from high school. Just this one was nicer.Castroville is a nice little town full of antique shops and meat processing places. Being so close to San Antonio, it is a frequent stop for people looking to attend flea markets and craft bizarres. But if you get off the main road, you can find some interesting old places to gawk at.We decided that after all the years we have been passing through Castroville on our way to other places, we were going to once and for all stop and take a walking tour of the town.Of course, this would have to happen on a day when it wasn't so cold or windy.So, we moved on down the road to Hondo. You may have heard of Hondo, TX either in the movies or from the famous sign that warns drivers in a nice and polite way, not to speed through town.In the past twenty years, Hondo has gone from a speed trap with a McDonald's to a full fledged, Wal Mart and now, Super Wal Mart metropolis, yet maintaining that Dairy Queen small town feel about it.We drove up and down a few streets just to enjoy some of the small town feel. I know that people in these towns have cable (or at least the Dish) and they certainly get the paper, but you can't help but feel as though you are experiencing life in a slower, simpler and more enjoyable pace when you visit. And please don't misunderstand, I don't suggest for a moment that these folks are bumpkins, just that they have a lot less traffic than we do.
My wife was especially fond of the Santa Cowboy. How appropriate for Hondo.
I liked the fact that the local country radio station went all out in their Christmas display along the main road.Up next: Lunch in D'Hanis.