Interesting road signage

Here's a sign I have not seen before on the road. This was taken during our roaming between Reno and Fallon, Nevada. We headed to Pyramid Lake and loved it. It is so open and different out there in the desert. We didn't see any bulls, or even cows. But we did see some horses. And a great big lake.

Now here's a sign from the Reno area that I found simply hysterical! Someone with a sense of humor MUST have known that a bus stop right in front of the Beware of Bears sign would be hilarious. I wonder if anyone ever uses it. Those houses up there looked pretty expensive. Maybe the housekeepers use the bus. I'm really curious. No one used it when we passed by twice.



Reno is about one hour from Fallon and we stayed there our last evening in Nevada since we were flying out of there back to Texas. We got up and drove 50 miles south to catch a glimpse of the northern tip of Lake Tahoe. It was fabulous. People were outside -- hiking, biking, walking, climbing. We loved it up there. We drove up and down and round and round and had a blast. Our stopping point was King's Beach. What a neat area. It sort of reminded me of an older area of Austin. But with really, really tall pines surrounding every building. I loved the fresh air there. We even touched into California! I had forgotten we'd do that until we saw the welcome sign.

Coming from Texas, home of all sorts of wonderful tacos...I just didn't know what to make of this sign:

Can someone explain this to me?

I might just be missing something but how is a dressed up cow mannequin suppose to entice me to buy things here? If anything, I find it a bit creepy. But that's must my opinion. This is a shop at the Dallas airport.

Is the window mine? Or hers?

When you have a window such as this, to whom does it belong? It's up far enough to just possibly be hers but I don't want to be rude and just do what I will with it. So I didn't touch it; nor did she for most of the trip. Then she finally closed it and we both slept a bit.

I miss sitting in the exit rows. And after all that practicing with Sonia for evacuating fellow passengers and for operating the exits. Sigh, we should run a drill. I told Jess if we keep doing site visits together, I will have to ask her to start practicing evacuation drills with me. :)

No news is good news.

It's not that we have forgotten to post. It's just that I am going on two full weeks at home! Woo hoo! Check back next week for something as Jessica and I head to Nevada and Iowa. There's bound to be a funny story there somewhere.

Magnolia, Arkansas

I don't have any funny stories to share from this 3-day trip to Magnolia since I didn't get to explore as much as planned due to a migraine. BUT, I can tell you I was pleasantly surprised by my trip.

Once you pass Dallas and get on IH-30 East, it really gets pretty! I wasn't expecting that at all! Rolling hills, lots of land, pretty homes/ranches, beehives tucked here and there and a pretty drive all around.

And what I did see of Magnolia was very clean and quaint. Their town square had tons of cute and cool shops. And this movie theatre looked awesome and actually showed flicks! Current ones! And as I snapped shots, several people strolled by to catch one. I really wish our Palace Theatre in Seguin would do the same. Everyone at the mill was really nice and I was impressed by the way things looked. Next time I go, I will have to take more pics.

Cruising through Mississippi

Here's what I am thinking right now about Mississippi:

1. m-i-crooked letter, crooked letter-i-crooked letter, crooked letter-i-hump back, hump back-i.
Who learned this when they were young? Does anyone out there other than me remember this? Or was it just a North Carolina thing??

2. Big-*&# grasshoppers reside there.
Here's what I mean, see below photo. I'm not sure you can sense his size here but he was like the size of my thumb. It's ok to snap a shot of him but I would not want him on me. And when I was pointing my digicam at him...he kept slinking around that plant leaf! As if he didn't realize he's so wide I could still see him. He was creepy the longer I gazed at him. Look at that face. Looks like an alien droid staring at me. And that body? Looks like armor to me. Like from Predator, whichever movie you liked best. There were lots of these guys around.

3. Traveling thru this state requires planning, careful planning.
We were driving back from FL and though we had our picnic basket, we craved fried chicken (when do I not crave this?) so we decided to stop at a KFC at exit 69 on IH-10 (note: do not EVER stop here again). Thus began one of our funniest dinner escapades. We got the food and it was not a great dining place so we took it to go. We figured a rest area would be good, so we stopped at the first one and it looked pretty nice. Good tables, clean, not crowded. We set out some things and see this cute little guy below. Oh, I sure did think he was adorable. UNTIL he kept coming over to our table. Sniffing out what we had. Mark tried to scare him off but he kept coming back. And then we noticed he looked kind of funny. See how his legs are? I don't recall other raccoons here in TX or even back in NC had long skinny legs like that. So we eye him closely and notice he's walk/running sort of crooked. Isn't that rabbied animals do? Act disoriented a little? By now, we just wanted to eat and this critter was aggressively pursuing us. So we laugh and take our food to the next table, after I yelled and chased him up a tree. That lasted about 20 seconds b/c he then hopped on the table we just left and then came over again to us so we chased him farther away, laughing the whole time b/c it was so ridiculous that we couldn't eat our dinner. So we got in the car and left the crazed raccoon, eyed the next rest area and kept driving and finally got into Louisianna but saw not one open rest area so we finally found a beautiful spot in a bank parking lot and sat in the comfortable, safe, air-conditioned luxury of our car and finally ate dinner. Somehow, the chicken managed to still taste ok after all that.

I guess there are some lessons here when you have to go through Mississippi:

1. Plan meals carefully if you have to eat on the road and do not stop for chicken at exit 69. :)
2. Perhaps stick with original meal plans.
3. Do not let cute animals distract you while they make plans to take food from you.
4. There are no great places to stop along IH-10 in MS. If there are, someone let us know since we'll likely drive that route again.

And then you lift the laptop like so....

But we wish we were! I wonder if the company will buy a location in Africa one day. You never know. I read CMC is now over 14,000 employees strong and we're in 11 countries. Pretty cool. I love working here.

Sometimes it's like dejavu, I tell you. How many times did you see us ER girls at SAPL pulling and pushing the mobile labs all over town? And here we are at CMC, setting things up to do the same.