Tuesday

 We dropped Henry off at Boy’s Camp in Edinburg at 9.  Visited the bus in Harlingen at 9:30.  Remember how good the front door looked after Jacinto fixed it, and how bad the step looked by comparison? Well, Jacinto noticed that too, so he resurfaced and repainted the step.“Like new.”  He says. It just keeps getting better. Still needs mirrors and chrome reinstalled before we can move it though.And maybe most importantly, it’s missing the Beaver emblem on the front!  Chrome due back on Friday.  The date got extended because the mirrors need extra work. Gasoline and a snack in Riviera.  (Think Krispy Kreme.) Lunch at Mac’s Barbecue in Rockport. Made it to the field south of Big Tree for some distant Whooping Cranes by early afternoon.   Whooping Crane.  Year bird #412. Spotted our first Common Loon of the year.  #413. Popped over to Goose Island State Park for a walk through the oak forest…out to the bayside marsh…  …and a Seaside Sparrow.  #414. Back to Corpus Christi in time to check in at our apartment (we’re test driving Airbnb instead of a hotel room), and get dinner at…...Guess Where…......That’s right.  SNOOPY’S! I want Larry’s job when I grow up.  He stands around, talks, and hugs people all day. A sunset dinner.  Tomorrow, Doctors checkup appointments for Judy. 

Shopping

 More and more, instead of going out, we just click what we want on Amazon.com.  What we buy shows up at our door two days later. I think about the logic of having a big delivery truck deliver to our house every day.  It makes economic sense for us, considering it doesn’t cost any more for us, and that our time to run shopping errands is part of our economy. I wonder if Amazon shopping makes sense for the planet.  We’re not buying stuff we weren’t going to buy anyway.  If each purchase was going to require a trip to go get it, it probably makes more sense to have a big delivery van distributing a hundred packages, than for a hundred people to be out running these errands in their cars.  Next to consider is the cardboard.  That’s an awful lot of cardboard cartons being delivered to our house.  We break them down and put them all in recycling.  I presume if they don’t get re-assembled and used again as-is (and they probably don’t), they all get melted down into material that will make the next crop of cardboard boxes.  Either way, they won’t be going in the landfill. So, I conclude that Amazon.com is good for us, and is probably okay for the planet as well.  J  

Parakeets

 Every evening, in the same neighborhood in McAllen, hundreds of green parakeets come together to roost. They cover the wires.  And buildings!They don’t stay like this.  Eventually they all settle down into the tree canopy for the night. One of these parakeets is not like the others.  A yellow-chevroned parakeet! And another one not like the others.  A mitred parakeet! We’ve seen the mitred before, but not yet this year.  Year Bird 410! We’ve never seen the yellow-chevroned before at all.  Year Bird 411!  ABA Life Bird 613! 

Getting fired

 Actually, in my earlier post, I wasn’t lamenting getting fired, I was celebrating that client retention is so good that we could get fired by a client that had been with us for 18 years; I just didn’t say it directly.  In my experience with other firms, clients tend to turn over much faster than that. I could say the same thing about staff.  We’ve had one auditor leave in the last few years, but we’ve hired several more.  There are employees that have been with us for twenty years and more.  I could say the same thing again; in my experience with other firms, employees tend to turn over much faster than that. I’m amazed and delighted.  

RE: College football

Oh darn.  Go DAWGS! 

From: Steve Taylor [mailto:spt@thetaylorcompany.net]
Sent: Friday, December 2, 2016 10:05 PM
To: Bill Taylor (Bill Taylor) <billt4@earthlink.net>; David Taylor (David Taylor) <taylor234@comcast.net>; Tom Taylor (Tom Taylor) <code-boy@earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: College football

 Uh oh.  Tough assignment for Colorado. They’re only down one touchdown at halftime, but it doesn’t look good! 

From: Steve Taylor [mailto:spt@thetaylorcompany.net]
Sent: Friday, December 2, 2016 8:18 PM
To: Bill Taylor (Bill Taylor) <billt4@earthlink.net>; David Taylor (David Taylor) <taylor234@comcast.net>; Tom Taylor (Tom Taylor) <code-boy@earthlink.net>
Subject: College football

 Big game tonight between #8 Colorado and #4 Washington. Go Buffs!