Houston Hotel Lobby

 One Christmas vacation I decided to go to Houston for the holidays. After visiting with some relatives, I headed downtown with my camera and just wandered around, taking pictures of the urban landscape, the fountains, the sidewalks surrounded by tall buildings and the underground shopping center. 

The photo below shows the lobby of the downtown Hyatt Regency Hotel from one of the interior atrium balconies. The bank of elevators are at the top of the frame. 

This view became important later on because when I wrote my science fiction novel "The Gafferty Perspective" a few years after my visit, the final moments of the novel took place in the atrium lobby of the hotel. 

The last chapter of the novel was revised during a subsequent visit to the Houston area, where I used a typewriter in the offices of the The Woodlands community newspaper to put the finishing touches on it. 

Microscope Camera

 I found a microscope camera that hooks up to a computer. Here are some photos taken with the gadget. 

Cloth

Computer monitor

Cellphone screen

Edge of a dime minted in 2017

A metal ruler with a sixteenth of an inch between the marks

Bristles from a toothbrush

Contacts on an SD memory card

Fine Foods

 

Mount Cheaha

 Every so often I drive to north Alabama to take in the mountain roads and long-range high elevation vistas. While there are a number of good views and curvy roads up around Chattanooga, the best combination of those are found over on Mount Cheaha near Anniston, which features "the highest point in the state."

I find myself going back to Mount Cheaha State Park every few years, just to sit on the overlook balcony and watch the sunset. I lived near there when I was an editor for the newspaper in Pell City, and even then I would drive over to Mount Cheaha every other week to take in the scenery. It helped that the state built a lodge, a picnic grounds, a campground, a motel, and a great little restaurant with a great big window you can look out of while eating. 

Here are some photos:

The roads are steep with a lot of sharp turns, but once you get there it is worth the effort. There is even a four story stone tower at the "highest point" that you can climb up to the very top and be the highest person in the state, out of breath for sure, but still the highest person if you don't count people in aircraft. 

I went there a few weeks ago, and the place was about deserted. There were only about four people staying in the 120 room motel, the restaurant was closed due to a shortage of people to staff it, and the buildings looked a little shabbier than when I last saw them. Perhaps that was due to smaller maintenance budgets, perhaps due to the buildings getting older, or perhaps my memory of them being too forgiving since the last time I saw them. 

CovID 19 threw the state park for a loop, no doubt. Probably  not many people drive their motor homes and travel trailers up the long winding roads any longer.  I hope it will bounce back and revive. Until then, I will hold onto my memory of eating a full Thanksgiving dinner at the mountain top restaurant, looking at the fantastic view of the mountains receding in the distance, but for the same price of a meal at Shoney's down at the interstate exit.

What To Do With Leftover Grits

 If you live in the South, you are bound to have come across the question of what to do with leftover grits. There is no such thing as cooking too much (many?) grits, since a full pot of grits cooking on the stove provides just what you want to eat that morning (night?) plus the extra benefit of having leftover grits.

Since a full pot of grits takes just as much effort to wash and clean afterwards as a half pot of grits, you may as well cook enough grits for you and the family to eat right then and there, then whatever is leftover can be put in the refrigerator. That's right, northern friends, cold grits are almost just as good as warm grits. 

Cleaning a pot out in which you have cooked grits is a real challenge. Let's just say the automatic dishwasher is next to useless in this case. Pots with cooked on grits on their insides just laugh at automatic dishwashers.

Of course, fresh warm grits taken right out of the pot are somewhat fluid (depending on how long you cooked them), and when you scoop a pile of grits onto your plate and put a pat of butter on top of it, the butter begins melting rapidly, then slides down the side of the pile of grits as it finds the path of least resistance. Soon, what's left of the pat of butter sits at the side of the pile, thinking it has escaped.

But, no, that's when you take your fork and lift the butter up and smash it back into the steaming pile of grits, giving it a slight stir. By the end of this procedure, you wind up with enough butter mixed in with the grits to make them taste more buttery than gritty. Some like it more one way than the other, but to each his own. 

But the grits that are leftover in the pot, the grits that didn't get scooped and put on the breakfast plate, these are the grits that begin an adventurous journey into the refrigerator. They are scooped up and dumped into a glass (or other suitable container), then put in the fridge to cool. Sometime later, whenever the desire for grits arises again, just take the glass out of the fridge and slide the now solidified mass of grits out of the glass onto a plate.

The path now diverges. Some people will take a fork and start prying off chucks to eat right then. Some people will attempt to pick up the whole solidified mass and try to eat it like some kind of grit popsicle. 

But my wife tells me her family would take the cylinder of cooled down grits, cut it into rounded slices, then throw those into a pan greased with bacon grease and fry those puppies. I personally have never done that, being of the group that likes to eat their leftover grits straight out of the refrigerator. Probably with a fork. At that point, however, putting butter on the cold grits does absolutely nothing. It just falls off to the side. 

And such is the fate of leftover grits. It's just another episode in the "Greatness of Grits," soon to be a major motion picture. 

Screaming Yellow Zonkers to The Rescue

 When I went to college I managed to avoid taking speech class until the very last semester. It's not that I don't like speeches, I go to them often and even listen to podcast speeches once in a while. It's just that I don't give speeches. The operative word is "give." It's more like a speech has to be pried out of me.

I have made speeches in the past. People have asked me to speak and once in a million requests I agree to it. It's just not my favorite thing to do. 

Anyway, along came "speech" class and I was required, once a week, to give a speech to my fellow college students. 

My first speech was about the evolutionary miracle that is the human hand. It was mind-numbing.

I remember only one other speech, and that was the time I read the front and back of a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers. Now SYZ was some kind of popcorn snack that I was fond of at the time, and noticing that I had a speech to make the next day, it would seem appropriate (and extremely entertaining as well as convenient) to just read the quips and jokes found on a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers. 

The time came, I got up, and after a brief introduction (which was not necessary since everyone was consuming large amounts of Zonkers daily), I launched into a dramatic reading of the front and back of the box, humorous stories, puns, a zany cartoon or two. I think I threw in a side panel for a bonus. (I did not read the ingredients list. That would have been a bummer.)

But the speech was well-received, especially afterwards when I passed the box around for anyone who wanted to sample the product. 

So my suggestion is, if you find yourself pressed for a speech topic, turn to snack food. Always a hit with the crowd, especially if you pass some around at the end.