A Flurry of Activity . . .

Yes, a flurry of activity, sounds redundant but it is true. As February matures past the mid point all kinds of things are going to happen.

Mardi Gras will be going on full bore in New Roads and New Orleans. New Orleans Mardi Gras celebration are the oldest in Louisiana by far but is followed by a little Town of New Roads which has celebrated with its own parades since the 1920s or so. Today there are two parades in New Roads, one before lunch and one after. Traditionally, the morning parade is sponsored by black organizations, and the afternoon one is sponsored by white organizations. Sometimes the marching bands, and integral part of the parades march in both. Last year, it was the Southern University Marching Band, and it put on a outstanding show in both parades.

New Roads Lions Club organizes the afternoon parade. And it is the major money maker for that civic organization. Schools traditionally sponsor floats, clubs sponsor floats and there are a few comic floats sponsored by locals. At one time the Baton Rouge TV stations and local celebs did the emceeing, today the guest maybe anyone. Both parades have a King, Queen and court. And like New Orleans, they to have a ball that night.

But we are passing all the celebrations. We move on to the family birthdays starting with James' birthday and prime rib dinner. Amanda Louise will drive in from LSU, Katie will come with boy friend in tow, Chris will drive over from Dallas and James etal from Flower-Mound. Not sure if Georgie will come but I suppose she will be prevailed upon - Georgie does not like to eat beef, she'll take Turkey any day. We will have a grand salad and lots of wine.

Jamie will stay the night Saturday. We always enjoy his stays. He is a good fellow and causes no problems and his grandmother just loves it.

The following week, Grandma packs up and heads to the Frozen Nawth for long weekend stay with young Will in Madison, Wisconsin. And no, the lakes have not thawed out yet which means at best the local Madison temperatures will be 32 degrees or less! But Grandma confesses to liking winter (and visiting Will, Jake and Anne even more).

Will, I am sure has grown and Grandma will revel dealing with him for a couple of days.

Grandma, charges back to wash her laundry and pack up for the family business meeting in New Roads. We will meet at the plantation for the annual meeting (and Morrison family gathering). The drive over will be boring, we stop in Natchotoches for gas and plow on into New Roads via I-49 to US 190 across the Atchafalya River and Morganza Spillway bridges.

Additionally, there will be some planning for the 4h of July Gremillion gathering. Fire works on False River is a sight to see. And we expect to see Anne, Jake and Will plus Hildy and Tom Neujahr on the fourth. I am sure we will see Mark, Richard and Paul over the March 7th weekend too.

It will be good to see the family once again at the Plantation. There will be one less as Aunt Bobbie has passed on. It is all our generation now.

Harbinger of Spring . . .

Yep, saw a pair of cock Robins yesterday. They were kinda just standing there. They usually chase around looking for bugs and worms, but this pair were just standing there as if to say, "Look at me." Its gotta to be a good omen.

We had yet another violent storm charge through last night. Started up about 9:00 PM (that's 2100 hours for you military types) and it looked pretty violent to me. I watched a lawn chair go flying off the patio across the yard. Albeit, the chair is pretty light and has low wind resistance, it just up and took off. Learned this AM that over towards Keller several roofs were torn off. The Weather people are debating whether there was a tornado, well duh, they predicted tornadoes, so?????

Another sure sign of spring are the first Daffodils are blooming. I have them planted all over the yard. And the damn deer tend to eat them, they are kind of hard up this time of year for anything green. But these Daffodils seemed to escape to much damage and are now putting out flowers. The rain is causing them to spring up.

The deer have attacked the Day Lilies too. They are trying to sprout up and the deer enjoy the tender new shoots. They mow down everything worth keeping. They ate all the pansy's in the neighborhood. That is winter feed to them. Our new neighbors across the street are not to wise as to the animals and planted a large bed of pansy's only to find them well trimmed down the next day.

We used to feed deer, then they decided that they could eat anything in the yard. There goes the Wandering Jew - purple salad. We have a red tip in the back, and it is struggling to grow. Every year in spring it puts out new leaves and along comes the deer and chows down.

There are about 20 deer in the area. Our subdivision backs up to 200 acre wilderness. The owners purposely keep it that way and so it is a refuge for the deer. They rampage throughout the area. Fences do not matter, I watched a doe clear a six foot fence with plenty to spare.

Any rate it appears that spring is upon us. A few more cold snaps and old man winter is gone. Soon we will be complaining about the summer heat. Ugh.

Rain Storm

Wow, we had a storm plow through last night that was a humdinger. It woke me up at 2:30 AM with rain pounding on the bedroom window. Sounded like it was gonna come right on in. The storm was not unexpected but its fierceness was greatly impressive.

But the rain was welcome. We always seem to forget the desert is only a hundred miles or so west of us. Yes, a lot of folks would not classify it as desert but it is dry, full of cactus and mesquite, good for cows and oil wells. Another hundred miles and the permian basin starts and that is oil personified. Those poor Texans, a few scrony cows, a lot of mesquite trees and many oil wells. T. Boone Pickens country.

We here in good old Weatherford are suffering through the gas boom. Pretty soon everybody will have a gas well. Things have slowed down, the price of energy has declined and all of us that drive are pleased. But that has also slowed down the gas drilling operations. It has not stopped the building of new banks though. Weatherford is a growing town, and recently has had two new shopping areas and a host of new banks sprung up. The good news is that there are a lot of new eating places and the locals seem to lap that up.

So far the gas boom has lifted all boats so to speak. Everybody seems to be prospering and there are new hire signs posted here and there. Of course, the new hires are in the new eating places and do not pay that much but at least it shows the recession has not pounced on us yet. Still a new house here and there being built. One house has sold in our neighborhood and one new one under construction. Pretty soon only two vacant lots will be available, one next to us and one across the way. Not likely to sell as they are very expensive.

Until next time. . . .

Football . . .

The Super Bowl is done, a good one, well played to each teams advantages. The Steelers lucked out, so it is a job well done.

But football is not quite over, there's the Pro Bowl yet to come. And that is it for the active on the field activity for a while.

Of the four rating services, LSU comes out on the top recruting wise by two of them. Bama comes out on top with the other two rating services. A tie perhaps but each team had specific wants and got them fulfilled. There will be a lot of hoopla over the recruiting for awhile to come. At least LSU did well, shows that Miles is doing his highly paid job - getting out there and getting the talent. Yes, both teams missed a few select players and each team seemed to steal a player out of each other's back yards. Auburn is not even mentioned, Ole Miss was quite and no one heard anything out of Miss State. No comments about Georgia either. Florida is up there at fifth or sixth.

The Star Telegram, Fort Worth's more or less worthless newspaper shows a lot of Texas talent heading to Baton Rouge. They do not like that here. And Texas while it did well it is ranked down around fourth or fifth in recruiting. Texas A&M did not even show up in the top ten. USC did well but behind the SEC. Florida looked pretty good too. Ohio State was up there third or fourth depending on the rating service. Perhaps there is another national championship in the wings for LSU!

It is safe to say next year will be different. That is a no brainer but there is a ton of new talent, some of it will get play as freshmen. Til then . . .

Mom Has February Planned . . .

Yup. It is all planned out. Or at least most of it. There's a trip to Madison at the end of the month, a weekender so to speak. A solo trip sans me. To cold for me.

But she will be back early enough to get ready for trip to New Roads for the annual meeting soiree in early March. Walter has already sent out the annual invitation. Gave herself enough time to recover from Madison (that probably means washing my clothes [hers too]) and packing for New Roads.

Then she has to plan for the "prime rib" dinner that usually surrounds James' birthday. That entails ordering up the prime rib and cooking it. It has become sort of a ritual and is done at least once a year, the cooking of the prime rib.

So, yes, the end of February is planned out. And that's a good thing!