Ten Minutes at the United States Postal Office

When was the last time you’ve been to the post office? This was my second time. There to finally pick up my birthday present (THANKS MOM), upon entering I was transported back to a time that smells like wood and feels (ironically) like you’re not in the US at all, maybe a rural town in Italy that delivers mail on donkey-back.

I’ll share three anecdotes from my visit:

1: The man being helped when I arrived had a stack of magazines in plastic, protective sleeves and was explaining to the woman behind the counter the value of these “expensive magazines.” Apparently, he hadn’t been receiving them at his home regularly as he had hoped. I wouldn’t call him angry, more like excited. The woman was very patient with him. Eventually she went to get the manager. He was still waiting for the manager when I left.

welcome to the magic room

2: While this exchange between man with magazines and USPS woman was happening, a 70+ year old lady carrying a huge cardboard box shuffled up to the counter (cutting me and another man in line I might add) and dropped the package on the counter. She said she didn’t want the package. Then she left. She was wearing a leopard wind-breaker

Somewhere, a red pen is missing its top

3: Also while man with magazines was airing his grievances, I had an urge to form some sort of camaraderie with the man in line in front of me. I smiled knowingly at him, as if to say, “wow this magazine guy sure is taking a long time, isn’t he a little tightly wound? We are both so full of patience for waiting here in this line while he goes on and on.” I’m pretty sure he interpreted my smile correctly, because he then said:

“You’re fixin’ to lose your band-aid”

Indeed, the man was right. The band-aid on my heel was half off, flapping the air conditioned “lobby” of the US Postal Service. Camaraderie.

She’s beauty and she’s grace, she’s Miss United States

Rain flowers: last week’s rain gave us party favors

San Antonio saw an unusually rainy week last week. Rain always throws the city into a tizzy. Drivers nurse that break pedal and grip that steering wheel with white-knuckled terror.  Gangs of omnipresent feral cats are suddenly nowhere to be found.

And mother nature brings us rain flowers!

Tiny flowered shoots of joy

These delicate rain presents can be found throughout the ‘Cullough hood.

Taking over businesses, your yard, your neighbor’s yard, that crack in the sidewalk you always trip on…

Making friends with other plants, like cactus.

Or cacti, as it were..

Do you live here? Want to do a house swap? Like in the movie The Holiday?

Ok yeah I like this house, I took a lot of pics, but the rain flowers look so nice there.

Call them weeds, call them simple, plain, fugly, whatever you will. I like to think they are nature’s little treat for humans after enduring a (much needed) week-long rainfest.

Stay magical, San Antonio.

In my front “yard”

 

 

 

The buzz saw that broke the camel’s back

It was a quiet, tranquil morning on the ‘Cullough; nary a bird was chipping, nor a dove a-cooing.

Good morning, big world!!

UNTIL THIS BEGAN AT PRECISELY 6:58:

Sorry for the bad picture but I was standing IN MY KITCHEN and it was THAT LOUD!

In case you were wondering, THE GUIDOS ARE STILL RUINING EVERYONE’S LIVES!!

Now to be fair, I am awake before they start their death music. But I consider my wake-up time pretty early compared to others. Anyone who sleeps past 6:45AM runs the risk of getting Guido-alarm-clocked by their horrible beeping, sawing, jack-hammering, shrieking  vomiting, whatever else they do out there.

My thoughts drift to poor, sweet Roy, who is fast asleep in her bed until GUIDOS come a banging. She has to use earplugs! EARPLUGS, PEOPLE! Which then frequently make her oversleep and be late to work. And yes, while that does fall into the category of #rachelsproblems, it still AINT CUTE, Y’ALL!!

I captured some more ear poison as I walked to my car….

As you can see, the building for the “school children” is making progress. I swear if that building doesn’t produce the next Mother Theresa or Jay Z or Hillary Clinton…..this plight we ‘Cullough folks must endure will all be for naught.

This has been going on for months. I’m only now posting about this because I’M FED UP!

THE PEOPLE DESERVE TO KNOW!

Starting today, I am plotting my revenge. Stayed tuned…..

Happy birthday to you (CHA CHA CHA!!)

Last night the cake and I made a quick appearance at Julian and Joaquin Castro’s 39th birthday party at the Pearl Stables. After all, Julian Castro is the mayor of our fair SA and thus his word is law on the ‘Cullough. And Joaquin represents us up in DC, so we had to salute him as well.

There were cupcakes shaped like an American flag:

And 2 big projectors showing live-tweets of the grand event with the hash tag #castrotwins

When the twins walked in the room, they were mobbed. Literally they took pictures and signed posters of themselves for the whole time we were there. Not something I’d hope to do on my birthday but hey, these guys are men of the people.

We were a little bummed that we didn’t get to hear them speak (if they even did?).

At the very least we had hoped for their own rendition of this:

The weekend in 2 pics AND a video

a nice little section of the River Walk looking great on a Saturday morning

Tegan and Sara!!

The 2013 International Accordion Festival!

Which should also be called TUBA Fest, because it was rare that the accordion was not accompanied by the TUBA. Except in Zydeco music. You would have learned all about it if you had gone… 

Lunch Vacation

 

 

When you live on the ‘Cullough, you don’t just “go through the motions,” you don’t just whittle away time!

When Friday rolls around, we aren’t just going to sit around and play fun geography games on our desktop computers. No, we’re going out to lunch, ya’ll!

Enter: Beat Street.

If you remember, I had espresso there one morning (also a Friday I might add), but today the cake and I decided to venture out for lunch.

Great decision.

I got this:

 

This is the garden salad and the TOM KHA GAI, which was the soup of the day (or maybe week?).

It was a really, really good Thai soup. Spicy and creamy and the veggies tasted so fresh. And the salad was simple and perfect.

They have a couple sandwiches on the menu, and the cake got the veggie wrap which looked wonderful and she ate it all. We all ate it all.

Did we want to leave? No. Did we leave? Yes.

Well worth the trek there and back from the med center.

So, do it big today, ‘Cullough! Make it rain

Throwback Thursday: Rooster

Remember when I saw that rooster in the ‘hood? Haven’t seen him lately….but I have seen cats on cats on cats still on that porch.

Maybe this weekend Il’l go on a rooster hunt to find where he’s been….I’ll report back.

Tailgating in the HEB parking lot

It’s that time again everyone—football season!

While fans across the country are sitting at home glued to the TV or refreshing their ESPN app every five seconds, the sports-minded of the ‘Cullough flock to our football Mecca: The HEB Parking Lot

Once you walk through those stacked crates…it’s game on.

The DJs were pumping up the crowd with some high energy jamz.

 

AS PROMISED, our friend Shaved Ice Stand was there, along with a Sun Drop trailer and a Coke trailer. I see who runs this lot…

 

There was also this bucket of watermelon! I was sold

 

Dayum gurl that’s a nice piece of watermelon.

One of my colleagues got shaved ice, naturally:

 

tIgErS bLoOd made from blood of a tiger!

All in all: I’d go again. There was a basketball hoop that was well-occupied, and also hot dogs for sale. A handful of neighbors were there, although I think there were more HEB employees than regular folks in attendance  But hey, if I worked at HEB I’d take my break under an umbrella double-fisting watermelon and shaved ice while listening to jamz, too.

 

 

 

Motovation in the hood

A nice thing to see on the last leg of a run. A nice thing to see always

Alert Alert Alert

 

 

Saturday was suppose to be THE day.

THE day I finally got shaved ice from the Shaved Ice Stand at HEB. It was hot outside, it was about 3PM, the perfect time for ice. My companion and I did a quick shop at HEB and strut outside only to see THIS:
Technical difficulties. Closed. Sorry. Inconvenience.

Really?

We were devastated inside and out.

One positive thing the sign told us (hard to see in this picture, its in the bottom right corner) is that the real name of this icy business is ParadICE Island Shaved Ice and they are legit and have a FACEBOOK! In my mind this little ice trailer was just a bunch of shaved ice-loving nomads, but I guess they are real (and apparently have a contract with this HEB to stay a while).

So according to the official hand-written sign, they may be back open on Thursday.

But this did nothing for my colleague and I on Saturday, as we were now fixated on getting sugary ice.

Never fear! I knew another place in the hood that boasts shaved ice:

SA Pops!

I hadn’t had shaved ice from there yet…

Shaved ice at SA Pops did not disappoint! That’s orange/pina colada and blue coconut

 

Verdict: Really great, just what you would hope for and expect. They use a cool ice funnel as you can see by the cone-shape of the ice. Quality.

We stayed in the cool AC and watched some football with the owner and his mom. By that I mostly mean we all just sat in silence and watched football but hey it was nice.

So let this be a lesson unto you…Shaved Ice at HEB is closed till at least this Thursday. In the meantime, SA Pops has got you covered for all your sno-cone/raspa/shaved ice needs.