Owner: Horst Household Happenings URL:http://horsthappenings.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:51:51 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Things that occur in our world; or maybe just in my mind, that may or may not be of interest to you. Sometimes these thoughts revolve around my perception of the world; sometimes not. I just try to have fun and enjoy my time at the blog. Welcome to my wor Site statistics:Click here
More Texas Flag Fun 2008-04-17 05:00:01 I was going through some old pictures the other day. I came across some pictures I took in De Leon, TX in 2003. At that time we lived in De Leon and I worked for the school district. The district served as the fiscal agent for the Special Services Co-op that oversaw all special education functions for Deleon, Comanche, Gustine, and Rising Star ISD's. The main office for the co-op was in a storefront in downtown De Leon.De Leon is a small town and the downtown merchants were always decorating their store front windows for various holidays and other local happenings. I was driving through town around the 4th of July and I noticed something a little off (no offense meant) at the Special Services Co-op.Now, for those of you who do not know what "Special Services" are in the education world, we Read more:Texas
Picture Monday, April 21, 2008 2008-04-21 05:00:01 I have come across a lot of pictures of my parents. I thought I would post a few this week. I don't know exactly when some of these pictures were taken but I will do my best. The above pictures are of my Mother, Bobbie. She was in the band at Waco High School. The picture on the right shows her in her graduation gown.This is another picture of my Mother. I am not certain when it was taken. Probably in the late 40's after she married my Dad.This is a picture I found that shows my Father's Dad on the left. That is my Dad, Teddy, on the right. I am not certain who that is in the middle. I don't think it is my Grandmother, but I could be wrong. These are later pictures of my Dad. This is how I really remember him at work at Central Freight Lines on the left. Bo Read more:Picture
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, April
It Really Was FREE 2008-04-20 10:03:54 We had our HVAC duct work checked and sealed yesterday. I could say we had it done in honor of Earth Day on Tuesday, April 22. But we didn't. It just worked out that way.Let's go back about a month. We got a letter/solicitation in the mail from TU Electric. They were saying that we could have a company come out and test and seal the duct work in the house. All for FREE! Well this sounded too good to be true but my father-in-law insisted that I send it in. After all it was FREE! So I filled it out and sent it in and waited.Then someone called and set up an appointment to come out on a Saturday. Crud! There goes a perfectly good Saturday. Saturday arrived and so did the technician around 10:00 AM. He introduced himself. Dan Coker is his name. he came in a explained the process. I showed him
Earth Day 2008 2008-04-22 05:00:01 So as not to waste the precious few resources that this earth has left and in honor of Earth
Day 2008 I am recycling one of my earlier posts.Here it is:GOING GREENDid I miss something?Apparently the color of choice has changed. I have always liked the color blue. The new color of choice is GREEN.We got the April 2008 Country Living magazine in the mail recently. Green; REUSE; RECYCLE; REFRESH; The whole thing. On the inside it had The Country Living Green Guide; 50+ Ways To Make A Difference. I like #17 - Bulb Basics. It suggests that you drop the incandescent and go with the Compact Fluorescent. I've done that in part of the house. I don't like it. I turn 'em on and what do you think they do? They splutter and flicker and start out dim and have to warm up to get brighter. For an old man t Read more:Earth Day
Call Me When You Try This One 2008-04-24 05:00:01 I read my brother's latest blog entry last night. He shared a recipe that he found in an old cookbook around his house. I started thinking, "Hey I could do that."So, I did that!I looked for just the right cookbook and I found a yummy recipe for your enjoyment. I found it in an old Calumet Baking Powder book that was from the early to mid 1920's.Eggs in TomatoesSelect tomatoes that are ripe but firm. Plunge them in boiling water for a moment and remove skins. Cut out hard stem ends making in each a hollow large enough to hold a broken egg. Into each of the hollows drop a fresh egg without breaking the yolk, season with butter, pepper, and salt, and bake in a moderate oven until tomatoes are tender and eggs are set. Serve on rounds of buttered toast with a cream sauce.I also found these help
Does My GPS Work Now? (It's not really about GPS, that's just a little joke of mine.) 2008-04-25 05:00:00 Help me out here. I know I wrote a few days ago about how the recent emphasis on bio-fuels had pushed the commodity prices of corn, wheat, and rice to skyrocket. At least that is what I intended to write about on April 15. It seems that I quickly digressed and wrote about everything but that it seems. I quipped in the post that I didn't have GPS
to give me direction. Well, now I'm trying to see if I have found that direction yet.Now I see in the headlines that there is a shortage of rice, yes I said shortage of rice. Sam's Club and Costco are going to ration rice. Sam's Club will limit sales of imported jasmine, basmati and long grain white rices in the 20 lb. bag size. Now rice is a staple in many countries. Rice is also the food that you always seemed to get a lot of at Mexican and Orien Read more:little
Picture Monday, April 28, 2008 2008-04-28 05:00:01 Searching through the photographs have turned up many photos of pets long gone. Here are a few.This is a picture of my Dad's dog Maita and her pups. This was taken at his parents house in Robinson sometime in the late 40's or early 50's. The picture on the left is a picture of our Maita that we got in the 60's. She was a red Dachshund. The picture on the right is of some of the kittens that we had back in the 60's. This may be the group that I named after the Beatles. That's right John, Paul, George, and Ringo.This is a picture of Chris' dog Katrinka taking a rest from a long day of chasing cats and various other small creatures. Chris had Katrinka when we were married and Katrinka was an old lady by this time.Not a pet from times past but a good picture. This is our Trinky taking a snooze Read more:Picture
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, April
Yearning For Some Retro Prices 2008-04-27 15:55:28 I got up early this morning because I needed to go grocery shopping at HEB. I left the house around 6:30 AM and spent about 2 hours in the store. When I left I had about $280 less than when I went in and HEB had it. In all fairness I spent about $80 on something totally unrelated to groceries. That was a pair of wireless headphones for the TV.I have noticed that grocery prices have been following the gasoline prices into the stratosphere lately. There are some shoestring potatoes that Chris likes. They have jumped from $1.59 a few weeks ago to $1.79 this morning. A pound of store brand butter has gone from $1.59 to $2.09. I could go on and on but I am sure you are intimately acquainted with this same experience. So I decide to hunt through the archives. (Really several boxes of junk, errrr Read more:Prices
Send Me a Tree. You Can Grow Another! 2008-04-27 10:38:29 In this "New Day & Age" we are all supposed to be more environmentally responsible, stewards of our world and such. It would be so much easier if I didn't get so much junk mail. I go to the mailbox, or more precisely, Chris goes to the mailbox because I'm at work. She leaves it for me on the desk and I get home to go through it.I get bills. I can do without them but I understand why I get them.I get ads. Some good, most are a waste of paper. Sometimes I get a circular that has that promising look of "good stuff'. then I open it and what falls out? The ad to order checks, the ad for Senior Citizens to get prescriptions cheap, the ad for the little motorized chairs, the ad to buy a burial plot. Wait a minute. Am I getting that old now?Please say all you get this stuff too!Anyway, I have
Meet Some of My Old Friends 2008-04-29 12:22:13 I am trying a new image hosting service so this particular blog is intended to test this service. That being said, I was wading through some pictures last night. I came across some old friends that I dearly miss. The pictures were taken in 2003 and 2004. I hope you enjoy them. i know they brought back many pleasant memories for me.These are the Easter ducks we got in 2003 when we lived in De Leon. We went to the Tractor Supply in Stephenville and picked them out. Then we went to Wal-Mart and bought a pool for them. The yellow duckling was Ferdy, the brown duckling was Ducky. I can't remember the black ducklings name. This another shot from a low angle that shows the world from their vantage point.This is Molly, the Black Lab. She loved the water, anywhere and anytime she was in it. As you Read more:Friends
, Old Friends
Songs and the Sound of Splat! 2008-04-30 05:00:01 I spent most of last night working with and learning the eccentricities of the new program. The program is Sound
Editor Deluxe version 3.9. After many trial and error (mostly errors) attempts I was able to get 2 mp3's recorded and then uploaded to my phone.I know that it sounds like that is probably not much to show for the evening, but I was also trying to watch American Idol and then my daughter started playing her Wii on our TV. She likes the big screen for her gaming enjoyment. She is engrossed in the latest Lara Croft-Tomb Raider game. She has the part of falling off the ledges and splatting on the floor down pretty good from what I saw.Check out my "Easily Amused" link on the bottom of the page. Julie called me at school this afternoon and told me about this web-site. A couple in Cle
When Spell Check Doesn't Work 2008-05-01 05:00:01 It's amazing the things you find when you're not looking for it. I was scanning some of my picture files and lo and behold I came across the image of an e-mail that I saved some months ago. Actually the United States Mint sent this out as a mass e-mailing in August 2007. As I was reading the e-mail I had a word jump out at me. See if it does the same for you.The same type of thing popped off the page for me when I was preparing for our Kindergarten field trip to the zoo a couple of weeks ago. As some of you may know, we went to the Cameron Park Zoo. It is in Cameron Park which is just a few blocks away from our school. I was doing some research at the zoo web-site on their "General Information" page. If you go down to the section of the page titled "The Weather Factor" and then go to the s Read more:Check
It's Over, Sort of 2008-05-02 23:49:57 The latest round of TAKS tests are over. YES!!!It has been quite a week for us at school. In order to maintain a quiet, orderly environment for the older students to take their test, at our campus we did not have "specials" or recess on testing days. "Specials" are better known as Music and PE. Testing days this week were Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Rather than go to "specials" the counselor and aides kept the students in the classrooms to give the teachers a break. (At least they did it for Kindergarten.) Do you know what it is like to keep 18 5 and 6 year old's in the classroom all day with no break to run off energy or play? It's not easy but we did it. The kids made it through OK but you could tell that it was beginning to wear on them, just as it was on the teachers.The magic ti
Retro Saturday, May 3, 2008 2008-05-03 05:00:01 There was a TV show that I remember watching when I was young. I seem to recall that my brother used to watch it with me. The show was called "Whirlybirds." It premiered in the spring of 1957. I couldn't have watched it then. I wasn't even one yet. The show ran until 1960. I watched it in reruns. I guess I liked Classic TV even when I was little.There are a lot of shows that I watched when I was little that you just can't watch on TV anymore. I wish you could find some of the old game shows on TV. I mean besides "Password", "I've Got A Secret", and "What's My Line?". I would like to see "Concentration" or maybe "Truth or Consequences". Or how about "The Art Linkletter Show". Boy, those were good shows.Speaking of game shows, how many of you remember the game show scandal of the 1950's? Obv Read more:Saturday
Picture Monday, May 5, 2008 2008-05-05 06:59:51 More pictures of me again. I tried to take a break from focusing on me; but after all this is my blog and sometimes it's all about me.Here I am with my Grandmother. This is Ethel Creswell, my Mother's Mother. I knew her as Grand Mammy. It looks like this is when I was doing my residency and having to make house calls.It's me again, the tall one in the back. This was my Cub Scout Pack. We were a strange looking lot back in those days weren't we? I like the sneakers on the guy up front.Here I am at my brother's wedding. I am holding my niece, Meredith. Look at those sideburns would ya. I guess it's not all about me. Sometimes it's about Christmas, Christmas 1958 to be exact. I was two. I'll bet the little stool, the Fisher-Price Popcorn Popper, spinning top, and the other box was mine. I'm j Read more:Picture
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A Few Memories From Hillcrest 2008-05-04 16:21:43 This may seem like a funny thing to say but, I have a lot of memories of Hillcrest Hospital, A.K.A. Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center, in Waco, TX. The first thing I want to share is not a memory though. It is a statement from some very reliable sources, "Barry, you were born at Hillcrest Hospital!" Now I don't remember this because I was much too young at the time of my birth, but as I said, many people that should know have told me this many times in the past.My first memories of the hospital do not really occur until I was in the 7th grade at North Junior. My family had just moved 2 blocks away from the hospital. Often times ambulances would fly by our house heading north on 30th Street with sirens wailing. Boy, for a 12 year old guy in the 60's that was really neat. I would run out of t
Double Duty Knee Surgery 2008-05-06 05:00:03 I wrote a couple of days ago about my memories of Hillcrest Hospital. Not only have I had memories of living by the hospital, but I also have had my own experiences with the care from Hillcrest.You see, when I was going to Baylor University I had to have arthroscopic knee surgery. The surgery was at Hillcrest Hospital in 1978. I hurt my right knee playing football when I was in junior high. When I was in the 7th grade I played each play of each game on the offensive and defensive line until the last game of the season. In the last quarter of the game I was illegally blocked and tore the cartilage in my right knee. I sat out the rest of the game and didn't get to play much in the 8th grade due to knee problems. By the 9th grade I acted as football manager. For whatever reasons I lived with Read more:Surgery
BLACK TUESDAY 2008-05-07 05:00:02 I woke up yesterday morning to every computer owners nightmare; or least my nightmare.Something happened in the dead of the night. When I went to sleep my computer and I were in 2008. I woke up yesterday morning still in 2008. My computer didn't. It thought it was in 2003. In fact it thought it had just been taken out of the box. That's right. It wanted to take me by the hand and guide me down the path. I wasn't ready to deal with it so I got ready for work and left it secretly hoping it would come to it's senses and come back to the present.I got home after work and decided to check the computer. It was still in 2003. Man that's bad. It doesn't recognize the keyboard. I had to drag the old keyboard and mouse out and reattach them before I could do anything. Gack!!! The screen, the drivers
SUCCESS!!! 2008-05-09 05:00:03 We had success yesterday and it was not the rice variety.The new hard drive has been installed. It is a Western Digital Caviar drive. The new Windows XP operating system has been installed. All updates and drivers have been installed.Most of last night was spent locating installation discs for many of the very necessary programs. I have to run 3 separate word processors due to the variety of computers I work with at work and other locations. It took a while but I finally located my Microsoft Office installation and added it to the other two programs. I also use Mailwasher Pro from Firestrust and it took some time to locate the registration key for it and a few other programs.The next thing I need to do is to reprogram my macros into my keyboard to get all my shortcuts back. I use a Logitec
Mixed BagToday 2008-05-08 11:19:50 Well, yesterday was a mixed bag. We got the Kindergarten Texas Primary Reading Inventory End of Year (TPRI EOY)scores today. The results showed a lot of growth and all at the school were much relieved. That was the good portion of the mixed bag. Now the bad portion. Started to install a new hard drive last night. Much more difficult than you would think. Spent much time transferring data from the old drive to an external drive so that I have the files and can go through them at my leisure. Then had to try to get the old drive to boot in order to run data tools as an extra safeguard. I was planning to reinstall Windows XP as a clean install on the drive. This way I wouldn't have all the "junk" that comes with a new computer. Buttttt, I couldn't get the disk to boot on the new drive. Now I'm Read more:Mixed
Today Is the Day 2008-05-10 05:36:42 Today has finally arrived. Today is the day that many people have been waiting for. I know that I have been looking forward to today for some time. You see, today is a very special day. It is an event that many people have been looking forward to. Obviously today is May 10, 2008. People have made special plans for today some time ago. Today's event has caused many people to make travel plans for this weekend. I would imagine that all the people involved have prayed for perfect weather. What could be so special about today? There are so many things that happen today across the world. But this is Central Texas. What could be happening here you say? The event of which I speak is not the big wedding up the road at the ranch in Crawford. Yes, I know for some that will be a big day; president's Read more:Today
Picture Monday, May 12, 2008 2008-05-12 05:00:02 Here a a few snaps from our trip to Sea World and the Dwyer Group 2008 Annual picnic. The above pictures show us arriving at Sea World. Jess, Julie, and Chris (In the hat) are walking from the parking lot to the main entrance. All three have "08" on their backs. Next you see the main entrance. It is their 20th anniversary. Notice that yours truly is not in the picture. I am behind the camera. The Read more:Picture
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Sea World Update 2008-05-11 19:33:53 The family went to Sea World
in San Antonio yesterday. The big event was the Dwyer Group's annual picnic/outing. We had to drive about 200 miles to get there. The trip was about 3 hours and was pretty uneventful. Once in San Antonio it was fairly easy to locate the park. The biggest problem was the traffic. Boy I'm glad we don't live in the area anymore. It would get really old having to deal with Read more:Update
1953 Waco Tornado Remembered 2008-05-13 05:00:02 Sunday was the 55th anniversary of the worst tornado in Texas history. It struck Waco, TX on the afternoon of May 11, 1953. There is always a lot of talk of the tornado this time of year here in Waco. My uncle, Woody Barron, worked for the newspaper here in Waco at the time. I remember the story he told me once about the tornado. I was a little guy at the time he told me this but I remember it lik Read more:Tornado
, Remembered
The Restaurants On Memory Lane 2008-05-15 05:00:02 Sometimes you start to reminisce at the strangest times. Well, now is it. Last night I was thinking about some of the hamburger places that my family would go to when I was much, much younger. Waco has had it's share of chain restaurants and local restaurants come and go. One hamburger place I remember that I think was a local establishment was The Chuck Wagon. The Chuck Wagon was a walk up establ Read more:Memory
Let's Go Down The Road Again 2008-05-14 12:08:47 Chris and I were running errands yesterday. As we were driving to and from we began discussing the various bond elections that area school districts had over the weekend. Waco ISD, where I work, passed a large bond election to build new schools and remodel aging facilities. This has been needed and will certainly be appreciated by all staff, students, parents, and community members. It is always n Read more:Again
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