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Little things

 …that stay with you the rest of your life.  Moments along the way that didn’t seem important at the time but end up leaving in indelible imprint. We used to take a camping trip every year during spring break.  We’d pile everybody into the VW Bus and do a marathon drive to the desert.  One year, at a rest stop south of Colorado Springs, we spotted a bumblebee in the grass.  That made quite the impression on us; a pretty good sized bumblebee all loaded with yellow pollen.  From then on, for our family, that rest stop has been known as the bumblebee park.  If any of us are on a trip and report that we just passed the bumblebee park, or stopped for lunch there, everyone knows exactly where we are. Well, digging through old photographs, imagine what I came up with; a photograph of Becky and Matt at the bumblebee park! …and the bumblebee!  
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Blood pressure

 I don’t like taking blood pressure medicine.  It makes me feel sluggish and it messes with my libido.  I’ve tried it a few times, but so far have always been able to get back off it by managing weight, diet, exercise, and caffeine. I see the ads on television that say “Don’t take Viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain, as it might cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure.”  The combination of Viagra and nitrates causes a drop in blood pressure?  I don’t take nitrates for chest pain, but since my heart issues years ago, I have a small bottle of nitroglycerine tablets in my pocket at all times, just in case.  If a person had high blood pressure, but didn’t want the side-effects of blood pressure medicine, then why not take a little bit of nitro, and a little bit of Viagra, and only experience a moderate drop in blood pressure?  The side effects of that cocktail might be more pleasant than the side effects of the prescription blood pressure treatment.  
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Air conditioning

 When we got home last Saturday, the air conditioning was out.  Couldn’t get it to work.  No service people available before Monday.  What were we going to do?  It was so hot in the house; high 80s.  90s outside.  It’s still summer in way south Texas.  No solution.  We’re screwed. We thought about it a little more.  We grew up in California in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.  It got plenty hot there in the summer.  Nobody had air conditioning.  Somehow we all survived. Later in the 60s we moved to Colorado.  No air conditioning for another 30 years.  Plenty hot in the summer.  No problem.  How soon we forget how things used to be. We opened all the doors and windows.  We turned on fans.  We put fans in the windows to blow cooler air in at night.  We only covered up with sheets, not blankets.  We closed everything up in the morning to keep the cool overnight air in.  We opened the doors and windows again during the day when it got hotter inside than it was outside. We did just fine.  We got the air conditioning fixed on Monday.  We were glad to have it, but not having it for the weekend was not quite the catastrophe it first seemed. 
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Best steak ever?

 We know a guy.  Michael.  The butcher at our HEB store.  He cut a prime rib-eye steak for us and said “You travel all over the country.  I guarantee you take this steak home and grill it tonight and it will be better than any other steak you have ever tasted anywhere.”  A bold claim. At home we unwrapped a 2” thick Prime Grade Ribeye. With a little salt and pepper, we slow cooked it over indirect heat to 110 degrees with a touch of hickory smoke.  Then we seared it to an internal temperature of 135 degrees over high heat. Know what?  That was the most tender, juicy, tasty steak either of us has ever had. The man knows his steaks.