Taking Adam to the AT&T Stadium

Since Adam hasn't been to the AT&T Stadium, aka: Cowboy Stadium, aka: Jerry World...I took him on a date for a guided tour of the facility. Among other areas, the tour included the stadium itself, fine dining area, press room, locker rooms and a walk onto the field where we were left to hang out as long as we wanted.

Watch in YouTube for best quality.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not and Wax Museum

After seeing this colorful palace from the freeway several times over the years, I finally decided we should go inside. It’s full of Ripley’s Believe It or Not displays and a wax museum! The entire visit was as odd as you can imagine.

A vampire killing kit circa 1840. Made in Boston, these kits were sold to people traveling to Transylvania. (I must send an email asking them to turn the vials so we the public can read the contents. Aren’t you so curious? And do I spy pliers to pull fangs?!)

A shrunken head. The skin is removed from the head and put into a concoction of boiling herbs to to shrink. There was a video showing how this was done—nasty.

The world’s tallest man, R. Wadlow grew to 8 ft. 11.1 inches tall. Sadly he passed away at age 22 and at that time and height he weighed over 1,000 lbs.

There was a lot of weird “art" on display too. But this house I liked.

Above: This “Crooked House" took nearly 1,000 hours to complete—over nine months— and contains over 300,000 matchsticks.

WAX MUSEUM

After the Ripley Section of the building, we toured the wax museum, which turned out to be just as strange as the first part of our day. It has a haunted section with figures from horror movies (Adam hid behind me the whole time) and a Christian section depicting different scenes from Christ’s life—which was a little awkward. Celebrity, well known political figures, and movie characters were also on display.

I asked Adam if he wanted a picture with Johnny Depp and he answered with, “Nah” but then got a funny grin and bounce in his step and said, “Okay!” (Adam still has a man crush on Johnny Depp, more pointedly, Jack Sparrow.)

Some wax figures were very close in similitude to their live counterpart, others I didn’t recognize at all as the likeness was so off!

The Duke in “True Grit” which we finally watched a few days ago to see him in his academy award winning role.

Word. Anna agrees with Walt.

Having a “boop” moment with Gandhi. 

In all, it was a fun and weird day. Totally worth it if you’re feeling uninspired and bored. Totally.

Texas Freeze

The week of February 14th 2021

It RARELY snows and then stays below freezing here in Texas. But it did this year and they’re calling it Snowmageddon. It refers to the week long collective experience Texans had during record breaking below freezing temperatures. If you were to have been watching videos on social media that week you may have been groaning, laughing, and saying in a long and drawn out breath “that SUUCKS” quite a bit. The power went out. Cars slid sideways down roads. People brought their farm animals into the house for warmth. Others came home to find waterfalls spraying out of the ceiling or a frozen pond on the floor from a burst pipe. Supermarkets empty. No firewood. No safe drinking water in some cases. The list goes on.

Texas building codes don’t provide for freezing weather. There are no snowplows. The state is also on its own power grid, so when the power went out, we couldn’t get help from neighboring states. 

The power was out at our house all week. 

The night before catastrophe hit, it had just snowed. I wanted to go walking in it. So I put on 2,305 layers, Adam put on his hunting clothes, and out we ventured.

Things are so magical, quiet, and glowy at night after a good snowfall. No footprints. No car tracks. (The walk reminded me of the the winter I had to walk up to the BYU campus at 4:30AM in the snow to start my janitorial job. Part of it was shoveling a path to the doors of the building I worked in for the first round of students that were to come in around 6:30. I didn’t mind it, it was a nice break from cleaning toilets.)

The next day we lost power sometime around 6:00 am on Monday the 15th. Online, we were told it would be back on by noon. So we bundled up and shared a space on the couch under a million of Mom’s quilts. But it wasn’t back so of course we waited. And waited.

Still believing it would be back on, we decided to try our gas fireplace for the FIRST TIME since moving here. The temperature in the house actually WENT DOWN after lighting it. And it was only warm DIRECTLY in front of it. That’s when we decided we were DONE. The Marlex’s had power and offered one of their extra rooms so we packed up for the night and boogied on over.

We checked the house every day. And each day took a few more things back to the Marlex Motel because the power was STILL not on. Did we sustain any damage? Yes. We had a water leak in the bathroom from when Adam had winterized the pipes. (Drained and turned off the water to the house so no pipes would burst.) It discolored the NEW GROUT on the bathroom floor and bowed the manufactured wood floor in the hallway. Though, none of this you would notice unless you were purposefully looking for it. I consider ourselves lucky. SO MANY buildings sustained damage. 

Also my indoor plants WERE NOT HAPPY. All three of the fiddle figs are going to get some leaves clipped off. Poor things.

Anyway, we had a good time with our friends. They ended up housing another young married couple, a nephew and his college roommate, and already had their son and daughter in-law staying with them. So it was a house full of twosomes. Game nights rocked as did dinner conversation. (And Marlex fed us EVERY night! Could you ask for better hospitality? Wow.)

Below: Snow is melting, and the power had finally come back on! Home we go.

Thanks again to family and friends who helped and checked in on us!

John Wayne Exhibit

There’s no better place for an exhibit dedicated to John Wayne, than in the downtown Stockyards of Forth Worth, Texas. And in my opinion, a welcome addition—the Stockyards are good for one visit, usually a must stop for out-of-towners but there’s not much to pull the locals in for repeat business. However, the area is undergoing some revitalization and welcoming new business. The John Wayne Experience is one of those additions. Well done!

I can’t fault the exhibit for not having enough information or imagery on this iconic cowboy (for a movie star, how could they possibly be deficient)—if anything, there’s almost TOO much to read.

Though he was a Republican, Duke “viewed himself first as an American, who was most interested in the coutry’s welfare. He balanced his vocal beliefs in traditional conservative values with an appreciation of spirited debate that kept him open to new ideas.” “John Wayne believed in America and the American people, even when some of those people disagreed with him."

Above: His business card. Not a terrible design.

John Wayne ordered a customized John Bianchi hoslter made to his specifications. Above is the accompanying letter of correspondence with a simple drawing and notation depicting how “the gun should ride just below the belt.” 

Guess who was so interested in the sketch that she forgot to get a photo of the ACTUAL BIANCHI HOLSTER on display?

Look at this young kid! I don’t recognize him as John Wayne, at ALL.

From what I gather, the Duke was kind, likeable, and had great determination in his work.

John Wayne’s original name was Marion Robert Morrison, but his preferred nickname was “Duke.”

A local fireman at the station along Marion’s bike route to school started calling him “Little Duke” because he was always with his huge Airedale Terrier, “Duke.” He preferred the name to “Marion,” and the name stuck. 

How did he become to be known as John Wayne then??? In 1930 (when he was 23), studio executives gave him a name that would be more sellable to audiences. Marion didn’t mind, saying it was “OK with him if the people paying his salary wanted to spruce up his name."

This is as close as I will ever get to an academy award, and it was awesome. (We decided to end our date by watching one of John Wayne’s 169 movies at home. We couldn’t make up our minds and eventually chose “The Quiet Man” which was good but why didn’t we watch “True Grit”???!!! Duh.)

Above: A crate filled with unopened fan mail John Wayne received while in the hospital in 1979. They were never opened because Duke passed away before he could return home.Throughout the course of the exhibition the letters will be opened and put on display.

(We were able to read a few letters he DID respond to, and he was very kind in his correspondence.) It was hard to resist the urge to reach into a bag and pull out a letter, sneak read it and then slip it back.

Here’s a link to the John Wayne Exibit: An American Experience.

And here’s a link to the biography they put together for him if you would like to read more.