The chicken hypnotist...

A good friend of mine, Larry, made the Reuters newswire today. I woke up this morning to check email and the news and there on Yahoo's Oddly Enough was a headline Texans Chip in to Rescue Stranded Chicken-Hypnotist. I knew Larry had been working on trying to raise money for her and if times had been better for us I'd have chipped in too. So, if you see a chicken hypnotist on a bicycle you can thank a bunch of weird Texans.

a day off...

Things have been so stressful around the house lately with my joblessness and Shannon's family coming for a visit on Friday that I decided to force us to take a few hours off today. One of our favorite pastimes is Geocaching so we loaded up the backpack and GPS and headed for Georgetown.
The first cache we went after was in a new development west of town. There is a trail that follows a creek through a canyon. About 1/2 way down the canyon is a large cave with a spring at the base. It was a nice place to cool off and take a break. As we were exploring the cave I noticed an arrowhead on the ground and we started looking. We found a couple arrowheads and a few possibles. As we sat there we could imagine Indians taking refuge from the summer heat and carving arrowheads by the spring. It was really fun.
The next cache we did was alongside Lake Georgetown. On the way to it as I tried to blaze a shortcut I found a hidden cove and made a mental note of it. We trudged on towards the cache and found it quite easily. On the way back we took a detour to the little cove I found. On a hot Texas summer day that water looked very inviting. We had a towel but no suits. We decided to swim as only you can at a secret swimming hole. We went au-naturale. :-) It was a secluded cove and being a Tuesday the lake was deserted. After a nice swim we crawled up on the rocks and dried off. The sun felt great. We made sure to mark the spot on our GPS for a return visit someday.

that was fast...

Well, the 4-5 day trial I got picked for went less than an hour. I showed up at the courthouse promptly at 9AM and got to sit and wait. Apparently there was a delay in the courtroom. Of course, we on the jury weren't told what was happening, just that we had to wait. Oh-kay...
After 40 minutes of sitting and talking to 11 other peolpe about everything and anything but what we were there for, because talking about the trial before deliberations is a no-no, we were finally led into the courtroom. Hmmmm...that's odd, where's the defendant? The judge tells us to have a seat and then proceeds to tell us that the guy decided to plead guilty and he had been setenced to 25 years. Thanks very much. You are released from duty. And out we went with no idea what happened. As we were getting our money (yes, they pay you for this. A whole $20 for 2 days service. That covered my gas and a lunch) the Assistant D.A. comes in to explain what the guy did to get 25 years. Apparently he was DWI and managed to hit a car carrying his sis-in-law and her two kids and flip them into a ditch. As it was his third felony he fell under the three-strikes laws. I was glad I didn't have to serve for 4 days but I'd have loved to have seen some of the evidence in the trial...

P.S. Happy Birthday, Mom! You are now officially a senior citizen.

doing my civic duty...

The day after I got laid off I got greetings and salutations from Williamson County. I had been selected for jury duty. Today was the day I had to go in for the selection process. I had never had to serve so it was an eye-opening experience for me. Getting out of it isn't as easy as you'd think, or at least the judge was a real hard-ass about letting people go. Of the 200 or so folks that showed up about 50 tried to get out of it and about 30 of those did. The rest of us were broken into for groups. My group of 41 people were told to be back at 1PM that day for selections.
We showed up but the lawyers weren't ready. They asked a bunch of questions but I can't tell you what they asked because the judge said I couldn't. Yes, you guessed it. Of the 41 folks I was one of the lucky 12 picked to serve my civic duty. The lawyers for both sides said the case should go about 4-5 days and when it's over then I can give details...

The job search...

Well, I've decided that the job market in Austin sucks big time. I'm expanding my search outside of Texas. What I'd like to do is find a job out-of-state on a 1 year or so contract and move back to Austin when/if things pick up here. So far I've got zero leads. I'm sending out 4-6 resumes a day on average and haven't gotten one single response.
The good news is I qualified for the maximum unemployment benefit. A whopping $319/week. Whee! I was paying more than that in taxes when I had a job. We are really having to cut back. We've already cancelled our yearly trip to Lake Powell because even if I have a job by then the time without a job will have eaten into our savings for it. :-(

New webpage format...

Well seeing as I got laid-off I've been spending a little time working on a new webpage format. The old one was a little to complex for a simple homepage. Now it'll be easier to just add entries as I think of them. I didn't need all the bells and whistles of the old page. I wanted something easier and faster to update so I could keep my wits about me during my job search.