2006 – Page 4 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Tanksgiving

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Every Thanksgiving at our house over the last few years has been a rather relaxed affair.
Cynthia cooks up a very traditional meal, usually a Turkey and all the trimmings and we invite a few friends over to join us for dinner, drinks and conversation.

This year we invited Owen Finn over for dinner. Owen is a recent transplant to Houston from Galway Ireland. He transferred here to our Houston office to take a position that had opened up managing our customer facing services. Services like external tech support for our software and our maintenance renewals.

I had recently gone out drinking with Owen and another co-worker who was visiting from the Galway office. I did my best to keep up with two drunk Irishmen but was completely outmatched.

The evening was extemely fun and as I related it to Cynthia she suggested we invite Owen over so we could treat him to his first Thanksgiving. Owen’s here in advance of his family who will be moving here in January so it was a good bet he would have been on his own that day.

Owen is incredibly funny and a great story teller. He’s got this thick Irish accent and when he says words that begin with TH he just pronounces them with a hard T sound. Thursday becomes Turrrsday and Thanksgiving become Tanksgiving.

We arranged for him to come over at tree minutes to tree on Turrsday for Tanksgiving.

It was a great time. Jim Henkel joined us later on and we sat around drinking coffee and telling jokes and stories.

At one point Cynthia broke out the Book Of Lists which is a compendium of interesting facts and began quizzing us.

One of the questions she asked was “What are the seven stages of drunkenness.”

None of us really knew the seven stages. Well, we knew from experience, but not formally.

Turns out they are:

Verbose
Grandiose
Amicose
Bellicose
Morose
Stuporous
Comatose

After Owen and Jim had left Cynthia and I got to talking and she decided that what Owen needed was the list of the seven stages of drunkenness. And not just a writren list, oh no.
She would immortalize them in cross stitch.

She got some graph paper and drew it out and then dug up her cross stiching supplies and turned this out:

Click image for full size

I’m giving it to him tomorrow.

Freeze frame

I was contacted by Allen “King of the Oldies” Hill to inquire if I might be available to come to the Continental Club and shoot some promo shots for the new incarnation of the El Orbits.

Since David Beebe is about to undergo surgery on his voice box he will be taking a hiatus from the band for about a year.

Thomas Escalante, lead singer for Clouseaux, has already moved in to the lead singer position with David doing backing vocals and playing bass. With David gone the vocals are covered but there is a need for bass guitar. That’s where Allen comes in.

With all these changes there’s a need for new promotional material, hence the request for my photographic services.

Truth be told, I was pretty nervous. I don’t mind going out and shooting casually because there’s nothing riding on the results. When shooting on spec there is an expectation and failure means disappointment for more than just the photographer.

Still, it was an opportunity I wanted to take advantage of and I agreed to do it.

The results were not everything I had hoped for. I don’t own professional lighting gear and they wanted the picture on the stage at the Continental Club and the lighting there is pretty bad.

My current photographic preference is to shoot without a flash. This results in shots that are a tad grainy and “soft”, but look cool when reduced in size. In hindsight I should have shot a few with the flash just so they would have had that as an option.

I sent over the files from the images I thought were most usable and Allen determined that this one would do the trick:

Click image to see full size

In other photographic news I sold another picture at Sig’s Lagoon. I’ve doubled my sales revenue!

Coffee

Wayne “The Train” Hancock

Wayne “The Train” Hancock
Fitzgeralds – 11/24/2006

I’m in love with my car, gotta feel for my automobile

A few weeks back I finally stopped procrastinating and dealt with my 1971 Cutlass Supreme.

The car had been sitting idle for over a year in the garage. A dead battery and a few VERY low tires. I just kept putting it off over the summer as I was reluctant to dig in and try to get the beast running, not sure if there might be more problems or not.

When the weather turned cooler a few weeks ago I pulled the battery and got a new one. After installing it into the car and airing up the tires I tried starting the beast.

At first it did not seem that it was going to happen. The engine was turning over but not starting up. After a few pumps on the gas peddle I tried again and the engine roared to life.

I fully expected it to blow a cloud of black smoke and run rough but the car did neither. After a few revs of the engine it settled into it’s gentle 3/4 cam lope and I was able to back out of the garage.

The car had a pretty good sized layer of dust and some other artifacts from sitting up in the garage. I got the hose and some towels and set to clean things up.

Once the car was presentable again I took it for a spin and was quite pleased with how well it was running. The weather was very convertible friendly and the driving was most pleasant.

I took the car out again today. It’s amazing to drive around with the top down in the middle of November.

If the weather holds Cynthia and should be able to have our traditional Christmas eve drive down Westheimer from the Beltway to the Montrose with our Santa hats on. It’s quite a spectacle.