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We’re on our way to Corpus Christi in the bus

 …by way of Brownsville.  Can’t get much farther south than this. In Corpus on Monday, we’ll do the last round of pre-surgery appointments; three in all.  In the meantime, we hung out at Oliviera Park in Brownsville to watch the parrots come in to roost at dusk.  Red-crowned parrots.There are a lot of parrots here, maybe fifty or a hundred.  That’s what most of them are, red-crowned. But then, we spot a red-lored parrot.You can tell by the yellow on his cheeks.  Year-bird!  Number 400.  We were on a mission to get to 400 before surgery, so I wouldn’t be so tempted to go back out to finish after.  Made it. And after that, yellow-headed parrot.You can tell by the yellow head.  Number 401.  A cushion. And then, and thenWe think this might be two lilac-crowned parrots with a red-crowned parrot in the middle.  See the difference in the red pattern on their heads?  The red-crowned has more red across the top.  If these do turn out to be lilac-crowned, that will be 402.  Not only that, but lilac-crowned would be a lifer as well.  Way cool. Birding rewards aren’t always immediate.  Sometimes it takes a while to figure out what you’ve seen and haven’t seen. 
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Bre’r Bear Smith

 ..sent us this link: 
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y16ObVRvgOE This is a Car Guy kind of You Tube segment called Jason Drives.  It’s like Top Gear, only different.  The worst car in the world to drive, a 1951 Hoffmann.  It was a difficult day today.  I had ribs in the smoker when it started to rain in the afternoon.  The smoker is located in a bunker that protects it from wind, but there is no protection from overhead, which makes sense because the smoke from the smoker has to escape.  Whatever was over it would get turned black from the smoke.  No protection from rain.  We rigged a temporary plywood shelter over it at a safe distance above, so the electronics wouldn’t get wet, and the day was saved. We used one of the several 2 by 4 sheets of plywood we have on hand, in preparation for parking the motorhome in the very same spot we parked it last winter.  As you will recall, the motorhome sunk and ran aground last year.  In preparation for the possibility that there might again be extended rain this winter, we’ve had a nice ¾ inch sheet of plywood cut down into four sections so we can position each section under a motorhome wheel, or set of wheels.  There will mud boards, eight square feet of plywood under every wheel.  We don’t want to see the motorhome listing like that again.
Well, the rain let up.  The temperature is still in the low eighties.  The humidity is still up.  Just like we like it.  I got eight hours smarter yesterday digitally attending an all-day continuing education seminar in California about how to commit fraud in a government organization.  It was nice to be in San Francisco without having to deal with any of the traffic.  And the food was excellent, by the way.

 

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Judy the penguin

 She got her penguin badge. She’s wearing a fitbit.  Each day she gets words of encouragement from this thing on her wrist when she meets her goal; walking 10,000 steps a day.  There are “attagirls” for milestones achieved.  The penguin badge corresponds to the distance Emperor Penguins walk to their inland nests in Antarctica; 70 miles!  I don’t know how long it takes a penguin, but it only took Judy 14 days. It all adds up.  
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What is the future of television?

 In the early days, we received our television signal with rabbit ears on top of the TV.  Later we got more sophisticated and put an antenna on the roof of the house. Many years later, along came cable, then satellite.  Now we have a smart television that is able to get programming off the internet; a hybrid; a combination of satellite and internet. What’s next?  How will we be getting our television signal in five years or ten?  Will it still be cable or satellite?  Will it all be streaming internet?  Will that overload the available bandwidth?  There is so much content to deliver now; it doesn’t all come from the networks.  Who will be able to pull it all together so it’s available without us having to subscribe to all the individual providers? Will there be something entirely new and different that delivers our content?  Somebody probably knows right now, but I certainly don’t.