Retreat! Retreat!

This weekend is our company retreat. We're about to head down to Port Aransas, where they reserved a bunch of resort condos. We also get free dinner and drinks tomorrow. The main activities I've got planned are sitting on the beach and drinking beer. This should be a nice little break.
Tini and I might stop by the Aquarium on the way (in Corpus), and maybe we'll swing by the Cayo del Oso site, a prehistoric Indian graveyard that is now a road, a Circle K, a nd a bunch of houses.
Be back on Sunday!

I love nieces to pieces!

I found out on Saturday that I have a new niece, Kayla! She was born the day before, which is also Tina's birthday, so now she gets to be the special aunt. I have not yet seen a picture, but knowing my sister-in-law it's only a matter of time. While cleaning out the inbox of my recently deleted email account, I must have downloaded 100 pictures of Bella. She is a cutie, and I'm sure Kayla will be the same. Here's a picture of Bella with her auntie and uncle:


I spent pretty much all day yesterday watching football, and watching my fantasy football team be completely humiliated. At least I've been doing well in the picks pool (won Week 1, will win Week 2 if Jacksonville wins).
It was a rainy sunday here. Today, we went out to finish the trenching we left on Saturday only to find that the road on the ranch was too muddy for the machinery. So we went and finished our surveying (with totally negative results). It was pretty today: sunny but breezy and dry. This was nice for surveying, and should also have helped the ground dry out for another try with the backhoe tomorrow.

Nothing like 10 days in Paris...

except when it's Paris, Texas. The one nice thing I can say about Paris, Texas is that it has some good, cheap diners and a decent Turkish food place. They claim to have the second largest Eiffel Tower in the world, but Ken decided that was no longer true since they built one in Las Vegas. One strike against Paris, Texas is that it's in a dry county. There are bars, where I guess you get "sponsored" by a member, but I have yet to go to one. I have seen no less than 3 people who looked like Larry the Cable Guy's stunt double. I missed 3 people's birthdays this week, including my lovely wife. I celebrated by talking to her on the phone and going to sleep early.
After a stressful, short day today that involved a backhoe breaking after 2 of the 6 planned trenches, I decided that I would like some beer to go with the weekend of football. So I bought a 12-pack of Pabst at a store on the state line. I got back to the hotel room after lunch and cracked open a beer. One sip and I got an awful surprise: it's 3.2 beer. I should have known. If you've never had 3.2 beer, it's worse than light beer. Your favorite beer in the world would not taste good as a 3.2 beer. A cheap, acceptable beer such as PBR does not taste good as a 3.2 beer. After not having a beer for 4 days, I have 3.2 beer. I am not pleased, and I have 11 more left.
I might go hang out with Larry and Larry and Larry (why can't at least one or two people try and be like Ron White instead of goddamn Larry the Cable Guy) and watch the UT game and drink some real beer later.

Where in the hell am I? Paris, Texas...which is not bigger than France.