On Saturday, May 3rd, I went to see The Zombies at Cine del Rey in McAllen. I'd looked forward to seeing them ever since I read that they would perform locally and bought the tickets online about a month in advance, as soon as I learned about the performance. I bought tickets for my wife, my son, my sister, and me. My son lives in Austin, and my wife at this time is also living in the Austin area to nanny our grand daughter-something she's always looked forward to doing-but I knew they would be down that weekend and thought they'd enjoy the show.
On Saturday, all morning all I could hear in my head was Rod Argent's keyboard playing "Time of the Season," "Tell Her No," and "She's not There."  I head it as I drank my morning coffee. I heard it as I mowed the lawn. I heard it while having lunch. Yes, I was looking forward to seeing the Zombies.
The funniest thing happened when we went to pick my my sister. My wife has been out of town for several weeks, and I have continued to have lunch on the weekends with my sisters. One of my sisters-the one who went to the concert with us-has grand children, and usually one or two of the grand daughters has lunch with us on Saturdays. The six year old usually asks, "Where's Mary?" and we all tell her, "She's in Austin!" This time the two year old came out and greeted us. She hadn't noticed my wife and asked me, "Where's your sister?" I realized those kids have no concept of relationships, and since they know my two sisters are sisters and always hang out together, I figured that since they usually see me with Mary they thought my wife was my sister.
Anyway, we finally got to El Cine del Rey. We were lucky to find an empty parking space across the street right in front on the theater, and then we waited in line for at least half an hour, but we finally got in and found good seats.
We sat through a few numbers by a trio called Sick/Sea-a trio with a young female guitarist/singer, a bass player, and a drummer. There were pretty good. The second band, Hollis Brown, was more line southern rock. They also were pretty good, but I have to admit the guitarist was an excellent lead guitarist. Both bands pitched their CDs, which were on sale in the front lobby.
Finally, the Zombies came out, starting with a number I recognized by The People. But hearing the keyboard part, I realized that the Zombies had recorded it and then The People covered it. After I heard some history, I knew I was right. There were other numbers they played that I also recognized that other bands had covered.
The Zombies were great. They played their most famous (previously mentioned) numbers, and they sounded fantastic. I admit that I was surprised when I first say them-they looked old. But as the singer mentioned, they've played for over 50 years, and I know I first heard them in the 1960's, so I shouldn't be surprised that they looked old. But the music sounded as fresh as the first time I heard it, as I remember it, and I am certainly glad I got to see the Zombies before I, too, get to old. After all, they're only four years older than me.

It's July 25th. A lot has happened in the last few months. My brother-in-law from New Mexico, Ruben, passed away in June. We had gone to visit him while he was in the hospital in a quick three day visit to NM, and he seemed to be doing fine, recovering from an infection he'd picked up at the hospital (staph infection. After we returned, he passed away a few days later just before he was to undergo an operation. We quickly went to NM again to attend his funeral in Espanola. About a month later, my father passed away at age 87. He died on May 27th in the hospital-the Heart hospital in McAllen. Apparently, he had a heart attach on Wednesday and fell as he was getting out of bed after resting for a while after a busy morning. He had the phone on him and called my sister and told her he'd fallen, but he did not tell her he was still on the floor. The line was somehow disconnected and my sister did not know he was on the floor. When she called him three hours later, he told her he was still down, so she called me and I rushed to Donna. When I got there, my nephew Matt was there. He said he'd forced the door open, but that Dad had already gotten up and was sitting on a sofa chair. My sister arrived and talked to him a while. At times he appeared disoriented, so Teresa called an ambulance for the paramedics to check him out. They decided to take him to the hospital for some tests. He seemed fine at the hospital and urged us to go home at night. Elia decided to stay. She called after midnight that he was having some sort of seizure. When I got there, he seemed to have recovered. They finally took him for some tests, where they discovered he'd had a heart attach earlier, and a stroke during the night. The next day he seemed fine, but during that night he had another attach, a stroke that paralyzed his right side and affected his brain, according to the doctor. He was on oxygen and seemed to be on the road to recovery. My sisters and I started talking representatives from different nursing homes. My son and daughter dame down to visit him, but about a couple of hours after they got here and saw him, he passed away. Like Mom, he waited until he saw them and then passed away. The funeral was the following Wednesday.

Wow. Another year has gone by and I didn't post anything. I guess Facebook takes too much time away from other activities like blogger and twitter. So I guess I need to cut down on Facebook and concentrate on other activities. The big news at UTPA this week has been the body of a young woman that was found by some construction workers in the Science Building early Monday morning, February 6th. The building was immediately closed off and all classes cancelled for the rest of the day while police and other law enforcement official conducted an investigations. On Tuesday, the building was closed until noon, but classes would not resume that day until the following day, Wednesday. But in the meantime we learned more details of the incident. It was officially ruled a suicide, and the young woman was not a UTPA student. She was an 18 year old high school student from Edinburg North High School. Apparently she had a lot of problems and had attempted suicide before. She was also cutting herself. Sometime between midnight and 4:00 in the morning she went to the third floor of the Science Building and jumped off. According to The Monitor, she and some friends had walked through Pan Am the day before (Sunday) on the way to Peter Piper's Pizza, and she had seen the place and said that it looked like a good place to kill herself. They kept walking toward the pizza place, but she returned later on to carry out her thoughts. I don't know what to think or what to feel about this. Suicide is such a drastic measure and I cannot imagine someone being in such a state that he or she has to take his/her life. But I have known two people who committed suicide, but I can sort of understand those situations-they had a terminal disease and they were in a lot of pain. But for someone so young, 18 years old, it seems like such a tragedy to just end it all. Of course, I don't know the home situation or whatever she was going through, but at 18, there is a whole life ahead in which to work things out, I think.

Random Thoughts continued...

So today we did something for lunch we'd thought about before. We went home for lunch. Actually, we picked up a botana platter at the 107 Cafe and took it home for lunch-a botana platter for two actually feeds four, and there were three of us. Even with Hector along, we still had some left over,which was surprising-the last time we did something like that, we picked up a pizza, but when he didn't think that would be enough, we stopped for him to get an Angus burger meal at McD. And he ate that and about half the pizza.
Today we watched an episode of The Green Hornet as we ate, since they were having a marathon on the sci fi channel. Of course, Hector and I had seen the series when it originally came out, but Robert C had never seen it, so he noticed the resemblance to the old Batman series immediately. We talked about old Batman TV villains and laughed at some of them, and of course, pointed out the Bruce Lee was Kato in the GH series. In China, Hector told him, the show was known as The Kato show. Bruce Lee afterward went on to become the kung fu movie star after the series was canceled.
Well, that about covers the most interesting thing that happened today.

Random Thoughts

I can't believe it's been over a year since I last posted on the blog. I guess it comes down to being on Facebook more often than not when I have spare time. Things do change over the course of time, I guess.
Since the last post, I've been to Austin several times, and I've been to Chapel Hill twice. Yep, flew both times. Over three hours. It used to make me nervous to fly, but I guess after a while one just gets used to it, so I sit there in the place and even look out the window once in a while.
But that reminds me, I gave Maria Elena a satellite radio for her valentine and even got to install it last Saturday. We enjoy listening to the radio when we travel, and we can't really do that on an airplane trip, or at least I can't, so listening to the radio without any commercials is really enjoyable. I've enjoyed satellite radio when we've been on long trips and we're out in the middle of nowhere. It's nice to get stations nonstop.
Well, random thoughts to be continued later on....

What's up

Wow, it's been about 5 months since I last posted. I have to quit spending so much time on Facebook, I guess.
Anyway, since the last time, one semester has ended at UTPA and another has started; we're in our third week of the spring 2010 semester. Last semester's SI results were pretty good, with SI students earning a 0.8 point higher difference than the non-SI students in the same classes.
This semester I have 19 Leaders working for me in a total of 21 different courses-7 new SI Leaders. It's going to be an interesting semester.

Festiva Magazine

The Monitor's Festiva Magazine Creative Writer's Issue has one of my stories in print and two others online.