Life, it is a changing. . .

I'm in week six since starting at Sherlock's, and my life has completely changed. No longer am I fielding calls from angry, frustrated customers, half of which can't tell a power button from a hole in their head. Now, I am the day manager for one of the highest grossing pub/restaurants in the city.

My job is pretty cut and dry. I set up the show, I'm like the back stage crew. I enter all of the numbers, code invoices, choose trivia questions, and see who's winning the fantasy football league. I make sure that the ship is running well, and everything that needs to be, is in line. We open at 11am and start serving lunch, which is generally pretty slow. I walk around, greet people at their tables, and make sure the beer is nice and cold. The major difference is the customers. Instead of dealing with people who are already pissed off when they called me, I'm dealing with people who generally, are just looking for a good time, something good to eat and cold to drink.

Gone are the mundane hours of variances and two and a half hour long calls, logging every few words into the big database. Now, I have about five to ten different things to do on any given day, which are rarely the same on any two days, and one of my very best friends is also my boss. There are about five people that I met right off the bat right after moving back to Austin in 1999, Ron being one of them.

It was about nine weeks ago that my manager at Apple pulled me aside to let me know that my customer satisfaction scores had been slipping. He asked what else I would like to be doing within the company, so I told him, the same position I had been applying for the last 3 years, management. He asked me to give him another six months to try and work something out for me. The very next day, Ron called and asked me if I would like to be his new day manager. I interviewed with the outgoing general manager, with the area director, and finally the vice president of the company, and got the job.

On my last day at Apple, my manager made the comment that he had walked many people out of the building on their last day, most of them kicking and screaming. He had never walked anyone out with the huge shit eating grin that I had on my face. Never had he seen anyone so happy to be walked out of the building.

Anyway, in other news, due to the fact that I'm not staring at a computer screen for nine hours a day, my bulletin, blog and Youtube video sharing is WAY down, and will likely remain so. I have found that it's been a lot better for my mental health as well, to be relatively cut off from all of the conspiracy that's found here on the inter-tubes. I still get to browse the titles of many other videos that my friends here on Myspace and Youtube post, but I rarely watch more than one every few days. It's all begun to repeat itself anyway, it's like it's all on a loop, and every few months the same videos resurface as "breaking news" and "must see". I've seen them all, I've taken in as much as I can handle.

So, outside of work and personal computing, there is the rest of life. I went camping in Tanglewood again this last weekend with James, Katy, and the rest of the Tanglewood crew. Here were the entries for this year's pumpkin carving contest:



And the the winner, with bragging rights until next year: James!


The weekend before that I went fishing in Canyon lake with Rick and his Dad:


And the rest of the time, Rachel and I have been working on our new, and very first, vegetable garden. I've got pretty much everything you can imagine in there: tomatoes, greens, squash, broccoli, cabbage, onions, you name it.


It's been pretty fulfilling, and extremely relaxing. We're even starting from seedlings and transplanting into the main garden box. The only real problem has been these little guys:


I've built one screened box to keep them out, but it's taking longer that I expected to build these things, so every afternoon when I get home, I curse them and get back to work. They even crawl under the one I have to get at the roots.

Jambalaya Recipee

I make my Jambalaya partly on the stove, then finish it in the oven. Since I'm using Chicken and Shrimp I want my stock to have those flavors, real simple. I heat up the right amount of Chicken Stock and add some raw Shrimp shells to it and simmer for about 15-20 minutes! It gives it a quick little infusion. I do the same thing when making a Cassoulet, except with Lamb bones, if I'm using Lamb. The Jambalaya Recipe:

New Orleans Cuisine Recipe - Shrimp and Chicken Jambalaya

Seasoning Mix (1/4 tsp Cayenne, 3/4 tsp White Pepper, 1 tsp Kosher Salt, 1/4 tsp Thyme, 1/2 tsp Rubbed Sage, 1/4 tsp Dried Basil, 1/2 tsp Black Pepper)

1 Tbsp Unsalted Butter

1/2 Cup Diced Andouille

1/2 Cup Diced Onion

1/2 Cup Diced Bell Pepper

1/2 Cup Diced Celery

1/2 Cup Diced Fresh Tomatoes

1/2 Cup Tomato Sauce

3/4 Cup Enriched Long Grain Rice

1 1/4 Cup Chicken Stock with a Shrimp shell infusion (see above)

1 Tbsp Homemade Worcestershire Sauce

2 Tbsp Minced Fresh Garlic

1/2 Cup Diced Chicken (Cooked or raw)

1 1/2 Cup Medium Shrimp (I use Louisiana)

1 Tbsp Finely Chopped Italian Parsley

3 Tbsp Finely Sliced Green Onions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix together the Holy Trinity (Onion, Celery, Bell Pepper).

In a Cast Iron Dutch Oven, melt the butter over medium heat, add the Andouille and cook until it just starts to brown. Add 1/2 of the Holy Trinity, cook until the vegetables are tender (nothing smells better than rendering Andouille with the Holy Trinity). Add the diced Tomatoes and cook for 1 minute. Add the Tomato Sauce and cook for another minute. Add the Rice and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the Stock, the remaining Holy Trinity, Seasoning Mix, Worcestershire, and the Garlic. Taste the broth for seasoning, particularly salt. Add the Chicken, stir well and put the pot in the preheated oven. Bake uncovered for 25 minutes. After the twenty-five minutes stir in the raw Shrimp, Parsley, and Green Onions, place back in the oven for an additional 10 minutes, or until the Shrimp are cooked through. Serve with French Bread and your favorite Beer.

So, last week was a good one. I was picked by my manager at Apple to go to San Francisco for the World Wide Developers Conference to represent the iPhone Beta support team. Unless you’ve been living in a cave or just don’t care about such things, Steve Jobs announced last Monday that we will be releasing a new iPhone, the iPhone 3G, which is faster over cellular networks has yadda, more yadda, and better yadda yadda.

Anyway, I spent my time at the conference, then had plenty of extra time to spend with Camille, Jon, and Alycee. We had dinner almost every night, Jon cooked some homemade ravioli and halibut one night which was delicious!

We spent a few hours hiking in the mountains one day, and an afternoon at the beach another. While we were at the beach, a seal waddled right up to where we were!

Overall, the trip was great, and I really needed a trip out of town since Dad died. It’s really strange what’s been happening to me lately. Everyone knows that I’ve always been into UFO’s and aliens and things like that, especially in the last few years. What has happened though, is that my research into the topic has lead me to modern day theoretical speakers like Michael Tsarion, David Wilcock, and Davis Icke. Many of the ideas and theories that they talk about are far beyond modern day Christian beliefs, but like all religions mirror each other, so do these modern prophets. I have delved deep into these theories, and have found myself more awake, more alive, and more knowledgeable than ever before in my life. Meditation and love have helped me to deal with the repercussions of my father’s death in a way that I never could have been prepared for.

Dad taught me to meditate for the first time when I was just a young boy, no more than 10 or so, and I remember thinking that my Dad was like Yoda, and I was Luke, learning the ways of the force. I meditated only a handful of time since then, but started learning more about different meditation techniques, Chakras, and psi powers about 2 months before he was killed. I started to realize the powers of thought, learned “The Secret”, and the nature of matter as energy. Then suddenly, Dad was killed, and I knew what had happened before my mother even told me that it had. Of all the souls I have ever come across in my life, Dad had the strongest, and I have no doubt that he lives on and continues to teach me even now. I haven’t seen his ghost, but I have felt his influence.

I definitely feel wiser today than I ever have, but at the same time, recognize that I know nothing. I feel connected to the energy of the universe, to life, in a way that I never have before, and words like Lightworker, and Starseed invoke strong feelings in my core. While in some respects I feel withdrawn, and now separated from the rest of the world, I now feel more than ever that it will soon be my responsibility to lead people into a better way of living. In that, I feel connected in a totally different way to many people I’ve never even met. I have spoken of great changes to come in the past, and now is the time. The next month will reveal a great many things to you, so keep your hearts and minds open to the miracles that will be in front of you.

Time Travel

The dream started out hearing of my Aunt's death, who is very much alive. My immediate family and I went to my Uncle's house for the funeral, but it was a huge complex. They live in Alabama, and I've never actually been there, but in my dream it was a huge place with it's own parking garage built into the side of a gigantic river valley. If you stood at the top of the valley it was probably 2 miles to the other side, with a wide river running through at the bottom a good mile down.

I remember walking through the interior of the complex, through parking garages, up and down stairs, and visiting with family members. It was a lot like my Dad's wake, uncomfortable, and a lot of milling around. At one point one of my Uncle's encouraged my brother, my mom, and I to go outside to watch an air show. We climbed a few levels of the parking garage, up two flights of stairs and out a stadium style entrance near the top of the valley. There were hundreds of people scattered about, and I emerged just in time to see a wake boarder dropped out of an airplane into the river below.

My mom gasped, thinking that he was surely dead, but I assured her that he probably did that sort of thing all the time. We made out way over to cement stairs and the grade of the hill was incredibly steep, almost vertical. I struggled to keep my footing, holding on to the handrail coming from the stairs. I told my brother to go ahead in front of me and as he did, he feet slipped out from underneath and he hit his head on one of the steps. The grade was so steep that his foot caught a crevasse and flipped him head over feet. He landed limp on his face and slid hundreds of feet down the hill. I tried chasing him, yelling the whole time, "Please someone catch him!" but no one saw and no one stopped him.

I woke up at 5am this morning to a strobe light in my window. Lightning flashing over and over again. I closed by eyes and saw my brother falling, I opened them and was blinded by continuous lightning. It was almost 2 hours before I was able to fall asleep again.

Then I was back at my parent's house and we had just finished installing a hot tub in the back of their property. My dad and my brothers were all there, and I got really excited that I would be able to ask my Dad some of the questions I never got to ask. I went up to him, but before I opened my mouth he said, "It doesn't matter." I knew it was 2005 and I asked him why we were here. He said this is when it happened, that reality split on this day, and since then, there was nothing we could do to change it. Things were as they should be. He told me that I should always go first so that I will be there to catch my brothers when they fall. You can't support someone if you're above them, you have to be beneath them.

And then I woke up for the second time. The lightning had been outshone by the sun, but it was still raining.

SUV/18-wheeler wreck kills Bastrop County man

Last Update: 4/23/2008 9:46 am


Northbound lanes of SH-130 are open after a Wednesday morning fatal collision between a SUV and tractor-trailer rig.

A DPS dispatcher says it happened about a mile north of the Chandler Road overpass moments before 5 a.m. Investigators say a SUV struck the rear of a slower moving tractor-trailer rig.

DPS troopers say the semi-truck was traveling below the posted speed limit at the time it was hit. The force of the impact shoved the front of the Chevrolet Suburban's front into the passengers' compartment, practically telescoping the vehicle.

The driver of the SUV, identified as 59-year-old Alcee Gonzague Mouton of Cedar Creek, was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of the 18-wheeler, Joe Sandoval, 39, of Kingwood, was taken to Seton Medical Center in Georgetown for observation.

Traffic investigators are trying to determine why the big truck was moving slowly in the travel lanes of SH-130.

The northbound lanes of SH-130 were closed for several hours Wednesday morning as traffic investigators sorted through the scattered debris.

A short autobiography

I was raised as a Texan, Cajun, Catholic, Eagle Scout, I love my wife, and my huge family. I’m loyal to the end to my friends and believe in working hard. I’m into Sci-Fi, Saturday morning cartoons, action movies, and computers, and I have been collecting comic books for 20 years.

I worked in the restaurant business for 15 years, love to cook, and love to be in the kitchen. For most of that time I dreamt of being and actor, but it was not meant to be. For the last 5 years I’ve worked in computers for Apple, restaurants, and have a DBA for my own consulting business, Mouton Solutions.

I like to write, take pictures, camp, tube the Comal, and once in a while, I’ll even play a video game. I’m not really into music, but I listen to podcasts all the time. That’s me in a nutshell.

Pretty much my whole life is in these pages, so enjoy the show.

Mexico travel

I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like total dog shit. A few of people that went to Mexico over New Year's got the Montezuma's Revenge, seems like everybody else got something else. Coughing, aching, sneezing, the whole NyQuil commercial. I get to work, and half the people here are sick, too. Can we really be getting that susceptible to pollens, spores, and allergies, that half our population is getting sick at the same time? I don't know maybe Freeman is right and the government is killing us slowly. I know I'm getting older, and my memory isn't what it used to be, but I'm having a hard time remembering so many people suffering all at the same time. Then again, we did all just party had for New Year's, and they say alcohol decreases the immune system's effectiveness, so that MIGHT have something to do with it. I'm no scientist, just a fixer.

So, I also wanted to take a second to write out our trip to Mexico (just the getting there part). So Christmas was lovely, thought the anticipation of the trip had me a bit on edge the whole day before we left. We woke up on the 26th at 4:30am and hopped over to the airport. No, not Austin, San Antonio. We had a friend of the family staying at the house for Christmas who lives in San Antonio who had to head back anyway, so she agreed to take us there on her way home. We got on the plane at 7am, fell right to sleep, and woke up in Monterrey, Mexico. We got off the plane in one of those rare chances that you only get on Airport Base Station Force One or a Third World Country, actually walking down stairs from the plane onto the tarmac.

We went through customs and read a HUGE sign warning all visitors to watch out for the Guacanna Virus. It went on to say that if you experience any aching, or soreness of the eyes to report to the hospital immediately. I looked it up, and apparently it's the West Nile Virus that they were warning us about. We went out to the front of the airport to check out the scene and the mosquito's were swarming. We went back inside, had to change planes and airlines, then flew on to Mexico City. Flying over it, Rachel mentioned that it's one of the largest cities in the world, and I believe it. It seemed like we were flying in a strait line over the city for 15 minutes before we landed. It's big, very big.

Once we landed, we had another interesting de-boarding method, a giant platform like bus pulled up to the plane, we all got on, took a 10 minute drive to the terminal and off again. it was a mad rush trying to get to our bags and catch a cab at the same time. I do have to say, the cab system in Mexico City is brilliant. You buy a ticket in the airport, step outside, and they are just lined up waiting to take your bags. We handed the cabbie the ticket and off we went, racing toward Terminal Norte (North Bus Terminal) It took about 20 minutes to get there, driving though the most poverty stricken squaller I've ever seen. Every wall had graffiti tagging and we stuck out like two sore thumbs.

We arrived at the bus terminal and had JUST missed our luxury bus to San Miguel, it was fully booked and the next bus didn't leave for another two and a half hours. Well, we certainly weren't about to wait around there all that time, so we took the next available bus that was leaving in 5 minutes. It was a regular bus. No bathrooms, no TV, no shoulder room, just your standard fare bus with a bus load of natives looking at us like we were crazy. Perhaps we were. It must have stopped 15 times on the way out of town, dropping people off, picking more up, and at nearly every stop, a snack man would jump on board and try to sell potato chips before the buss took off.

After about 3 hours we couldn't hold it anymore and ran into one of the bus stations on the way to pee. Have you ever had to pay to pee? There were giant cattle-like turn-styles, you put in your 2 pesos and it lets you in the bathroom. I'm thinking of installing one at my house!

The last hour or so there were still people getting off the bus periodically, but were were in the middle of nowhere, and I do mean nowhere. It was pitch black outside and 2-3 people would get off the bus and start walking down the road. this happened several times, no house, no light anywhere in sight! It was a bit creepy, and very surreal.

After a 5 hours bus ride, 16 hours of traveling total, we finally arrive in San Miguel. One more cab ride and we are schlepping our bags through Centro to meet up with Jaomi, Jessica, Candi, Paul, and Tonya. We hit two bars with our gear in tow, catching a few laughs from the locals, one even pointed us to the nearest hostel, I guess we looked lost.

After a nice tequila buzz, we finally made our way to the house where we stayed for the next eight days. Gorgeous. Six levels, three bedrooms, two living rooms, three courtyards, a beautiful kitchen and two rooftops terraces. The view was amazing!

On a side note, we had a few friends that decided to drive themselves in the next day. They made it in twelve hours. They beat of by four whole hours, and we flew!

So that's it. I hope everyone gets to feeling better! There are two cold fronts coming in this Thursday and Saturday, so stock up on your Claritin, those winds are going to blow that cedar pollen right up our noses! Be well,

San Miguel Trip

Wow wow wow! What an incredible time! Eight days in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, has come to an end. It took 2 planes, 1 bus and 2 cabs, but we arrived on the 26th tired and ready to relax. Every day we woke up to a wonderful breakfast that we cooked ourselves with foods from the local markets, in the most beautiful house I've ever stayed in.

We spent the days walking around town, eating and shopping. The first day we spent the day at the hot springs, and the next we all had massages. All too soon the wedding arrived. The mansion the wedding was in was easily the most incredible home I've ever been in, and the ceremony was amazing. You rarely get to see a couple like the Brashers, they bring fun and passion everywhere they go. The people they allow in to their lives are among the best I've ever met, and it's an honor to know them.