It's Cold Again

37 degrees here this morning, and that's cold for being less than 3 miles from the Galveston Bay shoreline. (I took the photo early this morning with my little Canon Powershot, just as several flocks of sparrows were flying overhead northward.)

At least it is clear and sunny for a couple of days, and we'll get up to the low 60's today. Saw the national weather and some of you are suffering more snow and storms. I'll take what I've got, I guess, LOL.

Heather blogged about her hip hurting from sitting too long, and I can so relate. Hope you feel better, Heather. I've been suffering myself from a bruised hip joint. Sometimes if I sleep wrong, as in ON that hip, it does that. It's in the same area as my degenerated spinal disks (L4 and L5), but the pain radiates through my right hip and down my thigh and makes it really hard to walk on my leg. When I sit at the computer, it makes it flare up worse. So, do I stop sitting here? Heck no. Anyway, I am suffering right now with that and the cold weather is aiding and abetting the pain.

Last time I blogged I had 5 more atc's to do for those swaps. Now I have 2 more to do. I spent a lot of time yesterday reading friend' blogs and if I haven't gotten to yours yet, I will tonight.

Yesterday, Hubs and I volunteered at our local Hillary campaign office. Hubs delivered yard signs to homes, and I did the phone banks. We worked for 4 hours in the middle of the day. I was amazed at the low number of nasty replies I got, seriously. This is Bush Country, after all. Out of about 1,000 phone numbers that I called, about half never answered or their machine did, and of the people who answered, only about 10% were either not interested or negative.

I was lucky about who I got to call, though. They were targeting Dem voters over 50 yesterday, so the audience was probably more positive and less combative. At any rate, if I knew I'd be getting the same type of calls, I'd go back, because we were asked to come back. But Hubs says we both have too much to do. We enjoyed volunteering though. Neither one of us had ever volunteered on a campaign before, which once we stopped to think about it seemed a bit odd. Depending on how things go here in the next week, I may think about doing it one more day next week. We'll see.

On Hub's list of chores (this one is something that HE added) is to plant these in the back yard somewhere. They are plants his mom gave him from the funeral. He has a weakness for tropicals. I do not know why. He's got it in his head he can transplant these to the outside, but the only place that they will be protected is in the bed on the back of the house.


Now, I do not have an exact "before" photo, darnit, but the two photos above give you some idea of the overgrowth against the house. See the philodendrums on the right side? See how tall they are, up to the roof overhang? Well, I have been after him to clear those out for almost a year. In 2001, they were only as high as the window and still in their planters. Seven years later, the roots had totally busted the planters and have become monsters.

So, now that Hubs had his own reason for clearing it all out, he got to doing it this past weekend. I'd asked him to transplant them beside the pool, but he decided to chop all the green off and then work at killing and clearing the roots. This is what he's gotten done so far: He also wants to chop down and destroy those japanese yews and I can't wait. He needs to do it soon, too, because a bluejay family always makes a nest in there every spring...a very mean and loud one.


Last night we had fajita burritos and guacamole for dinner, done simply, similar to how real Mexicans make it. Hubs hit the most Mexican tacqueria in town on our way home from volunteering for the meat, the freshly-made tortillas and the avocados. It was absolutely delish. I could probably eat Mexican several times a week. Not Tex-Mex, but Mexican (which is really just home cooking using their traditional food items). I suspect Hubs will be frequenting that tacqueria more and more in the near future.