Cattle Baron Mansions!

A couple weeks ago, I went on a Meetup.com group outing to tour a couple Cattle Baron mansions in Fort Worth. It was about 150 degrees outside, but we braved the heat! Man, cattle really made some people rich, because these cattle baron mansions were INCREDIBLE!

One of the houses didn't allow photography, so all of my pics on this post came from the other house (see below).

There were just gorgeous views from the porch.....


From the front steps....

Very intricate ceilings - all in perfect condition:

The front parlor on the left and the back parlor on the right....

Look at the crazy amount of detail on the floors! This was the hallway on the left, leading into the dining room on the right.

A real live 'dumb waiter' - and they still use it when they are hosting a party or having a wedding catered in the kitchen.
The entryway/foyer and the 'receiving room'......

A view of the wraparound porch from inside the back parlor...

Awesome wood floors - they used ebony and a few other kinds of wood to make this room's flooring...
The main hallway downstairs.....the woodwork was absolutely stunning!

Beautiful staircase to the 2nd floor....

Can you imagine having this front porch?? It even wraps around the side of the house - soooo beautiful!
Here are the girls in front of my favorite tree in the south - the crape myrtle.

The Stars At Night Are Big and Bright....

deep in the heart of Arlington! A couple weekends ago, I went to the planetarium at the University of Texas at Arlington to see a movie in their big theater.

The movie was about how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids according to different constellations and star formations and how everything lined up perfectly. It was so interesting and I somehow even managed to not get sick from the big huge IMAX screen!

And then after the movie, in the lobby there was a big tire.....and I had to go over and check it out.....
Lo and behold, it was a tire that was part of the landing gear of the NASA Space Shuttle Columbia! WOW!
I was super impressed with the planetarium and UTA - and it was right there near where I live. Just goes to show that there is always something going on in your own backyard!

Security - Friend or Foe?

Security

by Hunter S. Thompson (1955)

Security ... what does this word mean in relation to life as we know it today? For the most part, it means safety and freedom from worry. It is said to be the end that all men strive for; but is security a utopian goal or is it another word for rut?

Let us visualize the secure man; and by this term, I mean a man who has settled for financial and personal security for his goal in life. In general, he is a man who has pushed ambition and initiative aside and settled down, so to speak, in a boring, but safe and comfortable rut for the rest of his life. His future is but an extension of his present, and he accepts it as such with a complacent shrug of his shoulders. His ideas and ideals are those of society in general and he is accepted as a respectable, but average and prosaic man. But is he a man? has he any self-respect or pride in himself? How could he, when he has risked nothing and gained nothing? What does he think when he sees his youthful dreams of adventure, accomplishment, travel and romance buried under the cloak of conformity? How does he feel when he realizes that he has barely tasted the meal of life; when he sees the prison he has made for himself in pursuit of the almighty dollar? If he thinks this is all well and good, fine, but think of the tragedy of a man who has sacrificed his freedom on the altar of security, and wishes he could turn back the hands of time. A man is to be pitied who lacked the courage to accept the challenge of freedom and depart from the cushion of security and see life as it is instead of living it second-hand. Life has by-passed this man and he has watched from a secure place, afraid to seek anything better What has he done except to sit and wait for the tomorrow which never comes?

Turn back the pages of history and see the men who have shaped the destiny of the world. Security was never theirs, but they lived rather than existed. Where would the world be if all men had sought security and not taken risks or gambled with their lives on the chance that, if they won, life would be different and richer? It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies.

These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places at the now-familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences.

As an afterthought, it seems hardly proper to write of life without once mentioning happiness; so we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?

These Hands Are Small, I know.......

While I was at Baylor UMC for the 4th of July fireworks, I saw a very cool exhibit at the hospital - a 'museum of hands', if you will. There is a hand surgeon named Adrian Fiatt that worked at Baylor and years ago (like a LOT of years ago) started a collection of sorts - famous people's hands cast in bronze!

From what I hear, he started it by casting other surgeon's hands in bronze to show that there was no sterotypical 'surgeon's hands' - and it just went from there. Here is the surgeon that started this:
There were soooo many famous hands - I just couldn't take pictures of all of them. Here are some highlights that I thought were interesting:

Dwight D. Eisenhower's hands (he had a bunch of presidents including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr. and an open spot for George W. Bush - maybe they are being cast right now since "W" lives in Dallas now):

Here are Emmit Smith's Cowboy hands:

Billy Graham's praying hands:

Mike Modano's hockey hands (look at those long skinny fingers!):

Andre the Giant's mammoth hands - I cannot even describe to you how HUGE they were in person!
Nolan Ryan's famous pitching hands:

Walt Disney's magical hands:

Charles Schultz's Snoopy-drawing hands:

Winston Churchill's British hands - wow, now there's some history right there!:

Troy Aikman's 'passing' hands:

Neil Armstong's moon-walking hands:

And last, but not least, the hand surgeon's hands, doing hand surgery on a child's hand!

Fireworks......at a hospital!

On the 4th of July, it was about 900 degrees outside - really, no joking. So I had a dilemma about the whole fireworks thing....how bad did I really want to see them when I would be sweating my brains out??

Anyway, I have a friend who works at the big Baylor University Medical Center in downtown Dallas and there's an observation deck on the 17th floor...overlooking Fair Park where the fireworks were being shot off right above the Cotton Bowl...hmmmm......a hospital is a very odd place to watch fireworks from.....but it was air conditioned, non-porta-potty-bathrooms, easy parking, no crowds, no bugs, it was a no-brainer!

While we were all waiting for the fireworks to begin, I looked around at the small crowd that was forming on the 17th floor, I realized that I have never spent the night at the hospital (much less a holiday) since I was born! I am very thankful for this fact and have been VERY fortunate not to have had any major health problems in my life. There were patients up there in the observation deck that had amputated limbs, neck braces on, broken arms, IV carts with bags of fluid, etc. It was eye-opening for me!

Also up there watching the fireworks were a bunch of the resident doctors that basically live there. They looked kind of tired!

And just for funsies, since I'm so freaked out by dead bodies and stuff like that, my friend who is a nurse at Baylor, took me down to the basement and walked me past the morgue! AAAAGGGHHHH!!!!! It's a big door (bigger than a normal people door), but no sign that says that it's the morgue - just a little plaque with instructions for funeral homes and a phone. CREEPY!!!

Hot Dogs in Big D

I went to a restaurant on the 4th of July that would've been RIGHT UP Maggie's alley. It's called "Wild About Harry's" and it's in Dallas. It's a hot dog joint and it was kind of 'diner'ish - very unique.
There were a ton of different hot dog types, flavors and combinations! I got the 'hamburger hot dog' - it's basically hamburger meat, but they cooked it in the shape of a hot dog and put it in a bun! And they put pickle spears in the hot dog bun with it (mine's on the right). AMAZING!

They even had hot dog floor mats inside the door:

....and a big wiener outside to take your picture by (so of course I did)!

And on the way out, I had to take a picture of this Maggie look-a-like painted on the door in a bun!