February 26 2013 7:30 pm cst    62 degrees

We were driving around the port of Brownsville this weekend, looking at the shrimp boats

and saw this place where they sell wholesale shrimp just off the boat..

You get this chart of actual size  shrimp and order from there.  Might mention that it was Sunday morning and the top three sizes were sold out already.    This is wholesale so we didn't order anything then but maybe  later  we can have a shrimp on the barbie with Barbie  (and Neil) cookout.  Yum.

Have you ever seen where all that scrap metal that you take to the recycle ends up? Huge place.

 

 

Moving on to the island..........

 

It was high tide when we got to South Padre Island but we went to the opposite end from where we usuallly go.

The tide was bringing in all this yucky seaweed and what we thought were jellyfish.

. 

 

 

Turns out these blue bladder like things are part of the seaweed... They pop if you step on them.  Don't ask me how I know.

I took this picture beause I thought it was  the typical winter Texan:  Two old people, two lawn chairs, a dog and a lot of time on their hands.  Life is good.

Neil went back to the car for something and poor Howie thought he had been abandoned

I like the name of this road. It just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

 

 

Crested Caracara....or sometimes called the Mexican Eagle.  It is actually a falcon.

 

 

 

Tuesday February 19, 2013  7 pm cst   67 degrees

 

 

 

They came with their walkers

                                                              their wheelchairs

or standing on their own...

 

 

 

The few remaining vets of World War 2  plus those of us who wish to honor them,

  came to the Marine Military Academy's ceremony

 honoring the 68 th anniversary of the battle of Iwo Jima.

 

Superintendent Robert Hill   shook the hand of each person in the audience with military background and thanked them for their service. 

 

He then gathered all WW 2 vets up to the front to review the Cadets as they pass in review.

 

 

A very moving  ceremony.

These are high school kids doing the honors.  This rifle is  not magically suspended.  It is being tosed to the youngster on the left.  The other soldier is not asleep.  That is the posture of all who are not participating in the dirll.

..some younger  ones probably don't know anything about  the  battle for Iwo Jima.

Among the  WW2 vets is Walter Fleming who Neil chanced to meet at Bass Pro Shop  a few weeks ago.    In conversation, they discovered they both did service in the Navy(Mr. Flemings in WW2, Neil in Viet Nam era),   and Mr. Fleming said he still had his uniform and would like to donate it to some WW2  museum. 

Neil  gave him the  number of the museum where he volunteers and low and behold, Mr. Fleming was at the ceremony  today  and yes, the uniform was donated.

He was at Iwo Jima on Feb 19,1944 operating a Higgins Boat...he was just 17 years old.  He had joined the Navy when he was 16 by forging his father's signature.

 

And speaking of remarkable people, we met this young lady at a fast food restaurant looking fresh as a daisy but we find that she had just finished running a 10k race,,,she is 11 years old!  The younger brother was a real cutie too.  He came running up to me and hugged my leg because I  was talking to his sister.

 

 

This  is why we don't let Neil have the camera

 

 

 

This entertainer at the flea market  is a dead ringer for my Dr.!!

 

 

 

Gas prices are changing so fast,  the sign can't  keep up.

 

 

 

 

perFebruary 12, 2013   9:30 pm st   61 degrees and cloudy

This is Dorothy.  She had some sort of back injury years ago and this is as much as she can straighten now, but it does not stop her from her daily routine of feeding the stray cats in back of Walmart, in back of the supermarket and at the water kisok.  106 of them in all.
Not only does she feed them, she takes them home and doctors them if she thinks they are ill, she removes any kittens and finds homes for them and she even has some of  them spayed.  She says the batch she is getting ready to take to the vet will cost her $3,000. 

We offered to make a contribution and she backed away saying, "No, no, we don't do any of that." I expect by the term we, she was including the man sitting in the truck reading the paper, but he never even looked up while we were there.
Dorothy says when she first started doing this, someone was taking the cats in back of the supermarket and using them to train pitbulls. I assume she meant for fighting.

I can't get usedto seeing ducks on the roof

Or in trees. 

I was kind of surprised to find out how messy palm trees are.  If they are not trimmed,

  the falling fronds  can scratch your car pretty good if you park near a palm on a windy day.

Not very many places hire tree trimmers to take all the dead fronds away. 

.

This is the fried shrimp I had at Dirty Al's last week.  Next day we were out and about at noon so we stopped at Church's Chicken and I had popcorn shrimp for lunch.  Without thinking much about it, we had Shrimp Alfredo for dinner.  Three meals of shrimp  in one 24 hour period.

Well, that weekend I was so bone weary and sore that I couldn't do my expercises or finish my daily walks.

Long story short:  the Dr.  says it could be  that I had too much shrimp causing something like gout..a abundence of purines    Just what I need, another bone problem. and,  AND....I had been losing wieght up until then and this visit, I had gained 3 pounds.   Bad week!
One redeeming thing: I can use a cane now and have gotten rid of the miserable walker.

We often see families or  just a lone  person at a grave just siting or placing flowers.  These local people  do not neglect the family members who have gone on.  Very respectfull.

Gotta wonder why this potty is here out in the middle of nowhere.

 

 

February 5 2012  7:30 pm cst   70 degrees

This weekend was the annual Kite Festival on South Padre Island.
I stretched the Dr.'s orders a little and left the walker at home in favor of a cane and we went to the festival early in the day so we could get a good parking space and not have to walk much.

 

Don't know what he is taking a picture of, the kites are behind him.

 

Not much wind and slightly overcast but not a problem. If you know how to do it, you can raise a kite inside a building with no wind at all.

The price range of kites sort of surprised me, This one is in the $25  range

Whereas this one cost about $270

and some of these are more than a thousand bucks. 

 

I don't know how much was paid for this next kite, but it sort of looks like laundry on the clothesline. .  hope they didn't pay too much for it.

These kites have sand in their feet to keep them grounded.

Nice for the little kids to have a hands on.  Note the kite hands in the background.  I kept waiting for the rest of the person to go up, but we had to leave before he got the whole thing together..if indeed there was more to it. 

 

."It followed me home, can I keep it?"

 

Sweet cheeks

I have to eat a little crow here.  I said in a previous post that I wouldn't eat at any restaurant that had Dirty in it's name, but we have heard so much about  the fried shrimp here, that I gave in and after the kite fest, we went to Dirty Al's, even though the sign in the window says, Sorry, We Are Open.

Outstanding dinner.

 

 I would have a problem about going to a lawyer  who advertises a malaise.  Melaise, in my mind means uneasy, not having enough energy to get the job done.

 Think it means something else in Spanish?