Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Oy, here we go again...
I've made a habit over the last few months of making sure my friends up north are well aware of the beautiful weather down here in South Texas while they are shoveling out their driveways up there. Well, I think ole' karma is getting me back. Today is the third day in a row of 90+ degree weather. Humidity isn't anywhere near what it will be this summer, but humidity or not I'm just not ready yet for 90+ weather. The mosquitoes are starting to come out and it won't be long before they are out in force. See the video below for an example of what "out in force" means. The video was taken on my cell phone through a truck window while out mapping a ranch. Believe it or not, the video doesn't show anywhere near the worst clouds of mosquitoes, just a taste.
So, still some pretty darn beautiful weather down here, but I have a feeling it will get ugly and stay ugly just around the corner.
So, still some pretty darn beautiful weather down here, but I have a feeling it will get ugly and stay ugly just around the corner.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
At last, my vote will actually matter...
For the first time since I have been old enough to vote I live in a place where my vote in a presidential election (the primary anyway) will actually mean something. It's kind of exciting. For the last three presidential elections I lived in places where, whether the primary or general election, the results were obvious long before election day for the given state. I think that will be true in Texas when the general election comes around, but for now, in the Democratic primary every vote really is going to mean something.
Texas has one of the oddest election procedures I've encountered. I voted first thing this morning, but the popular vote only goes to elect a portion of the delegates. Every Texan has the option tonight to attend their local caucus to vote yet again, this time to assign a second portion of delegates to one candidate or another. So essentially I got the chance to vote twice today in the same election. I don't pretend to understand, and honestly I don't really care to understand, and I'd have to be pretty fired up in the future to go through the caucus deal again, but for this time around I'm enjoying seeing how the process works.
My local caucus had about 60 people (which apparently is unheard of turn-out, with a typical group of 15 to 20 people) and there were some interesting characters there. The two gentleman I stood next to for most of the event were talking and discussing the last time they had attended a local caucus. One last attended to vote for Mondale, and the other for McGovern. They were both there to vote for the same person tonight.
Texas has one of the oddest election procedures I've encountered. I voted first thing this morning, but the popular vote only goes to elect a portion of the delegates. Every Texan has the option tonight to attend their local caucus to vote yet again, this time to assign a second portion of delegates to one candidate or another. So essentially I got the chance to vote twice today in the same election. I don't pretend to understand, and honestly I don't really care to understand, and I'd have to be pretty fired up in the future to go through the caucus deal again, but for this time around I'm enjoying seeing how the process works.
My local caucus had about 60 people (which apparently is unheard of turn-out, with a typical group of 15 to 20 people) and there were some interesting characters there. The two gentleman I stood next to for most of the event were talking and discussing the last time they had attended a local caucus. One last attended to vote for Mondale, and the other for McGovern. They were both there to vote for the same person tonight.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Things have been cookin' down here in south Texas. We just had a group of firefighters from the Bureau of Land Management in Utah and Oregon come down for training with us and we put fire on just under 5,000 acres in about a week. It was a long week, filled with long days (and lots of overtime!), but thankfully the weather took a slight turn for the worse and gave us a little break to catch up. The group was great and we had a pile of fun on and off the fireline. Even though the training was technically for them, we learned a lot about the way we work and also picked up a lot of good info on fire suppression from the folks who spend a lot more time fighting fire than we do.
Here are a couple photos and a video from one of the recent fires. I have a fantastic video but for some reason the upload fails every time I try putting it on You Tube, so this one will have to do.
We spend a lot of time lighting the downwind side of the burn unit so that the fire slowly backs into the wind, creating a "blackline" that will prevent a faster racing "headfire" from crossing our firelines. The pic above is the headfire being lit off an ATV. After spending hours creating the backfire and blackline the fun part comes with lighting off the headfire that will burn up most everything in its path within a few minutes.
Life in general is going pretty well too. Not a whole lot going on. We recently tried out a tiny little BBQ shack on the side of the road out in the middle of the next county over and found it to be some of the best food I've ever eaten. Thankfully we pass the place all the time heading to and from ranches we work on so a few of us have made a point of getting out there as often as possible. The guys down from the Northwest thought the trip past the place was the non-fire highlight of the trip.
I never would have thought it, being such a tiny town and all, but Bill Clinton came through stumping for Hillary a couple weeks back. They only announced that he was coming the evening prior and it was mass chaos for such a little town to pull their act together to host a former president, but they did it, in true South Texas fashion it turns out. The speech was supposed to happen in the town square park, with room for up to 800 to a thousand people. Unfortunately it spent all day raining, so they decided to move it into the town's theater that seats about 300 leaving a whole pile of people outside in the rain wanting to get in. I went down to see if I could get in and was within the last 10 people let into the theater before it hit capacity. We waited there until about 5 minutes after he was supposed to start speaking, when the organizer came in and said that it had stopped raining and because there were an additional 500-600 people outside in the streets they were going to move it back outside. Not only did they move it outside, but they scrapped the whole park/gazebo/podium plan and instead hoisted the ex-president up on top of the tool box in the bed of a Dodge Ram pick-up right in the middle of an intersection. When it was over Clinton spent about an hour and a half working the rope line, shaking hands and kissing babies. I brought my photograph with him that was taken when he participated in one of the last events I worked on in New York. Thankfully Clinton's body guy was the same one I worked with a couple times and after a quick conversation made the re-connection with him and was able to get the picture signed. His people collected a lot of stuff that people were handing across the line to have signed and I couldn't believe it, but it seemed like pretty much everyone got back what they had handed over to be signed.
Overall it was a good time. To a degree it made me yearn for the fast paced event work, with stuff changing all the time and dealing with the security and logistics, but the next day I got to go and light fire to 1,300 acres and you just can't beat that.
That's about all for now.
Here are a couple photos and a video from one of the recent fires. I have a fantastic video but for some reason the upload fails every time I try putting it on You Tube, so this one will have to do.
We spend a lot of time lighting the downwind side of the burn unit so that the fire slowly backs into the wind, creating a "blackline" that will prevent a faster racing "headfire" from crossing our firelines. The pic above is the headfire being lit off an ATV. After spending hours creating the backfire and blackline the fun part comes with lighting off the headfire that will burn up most everything in its path within a few minutes.
Life in general is going pretty well too. Not a whole lot going on. We recently tried out a tiny little BBQ shack on the side of the road out in the middle of the next county over and found it to be some of the best food I've ever eaten. Thankfully we pass the place all the time heading to and from ranches we work on so a few of us have made a point of getting out there as often as possible. The guys down from the Northwest thought the trip past the place was the non-fire highlight of the trip.
I never would have thought it, being such a tiny town and all, but Bill Clinton came through stumping for Hillary a couple weeks back. They only announced that he was coming the evening prior and it was mass chaos for such a little town to pull their act together to host a former president, but they did it, in true South Texas fashion it turns out. The speech was supposed to happen in the town square park, with room for up to 800 to a thousand people. Unfortunately it spent all day raining, so they decided to move it into the town's theater that seats about 300 leaving a whole pile of people outside in the rain wanting to get in. I went down to see if I could get in and was within the last 10 people let into the theater before it hit capacity. We waited there until about 5 minutes after he was supposed to start speaking, when the organizer came in and said that it had stopped raining and because there were an additional 500-600 people outside in the streets they were going to move it back outside. Not only did they move it outside, but they scrapped the whole park/gazebo/podium plan and instead hoisted the ex-president up on top of the tool box in the bed of a Dodge Ram pick-up right in the middle of an intersection. When it was over Clinton spent about an hour and a half working the rope line, shaking hands and kissing babies. I brought my photograph with him that was taken when he participated in one of the last events I worked on in New York. Thankfully Clinton's body guy was the same one I worked with a couple times and after a quick conversation made the re-connection with him and was able to get the picture signed. His people collected a lot of stuff that people were handing across the line to have signed and I couldn't believe it, but it seemed like pretty much everyone got back what they had handed over to be signed.
Overall it was a good time. To a degree it made me yearn for the fast paced event work, with stuff changing all the time and dealing with the security and logistics, but the next day I got to go and light fire to 1,300 acres and you just can't beat that.
That's about all for now.
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