Year: 2025

Hammond, LA Day 6

Ponchatoula’s Giant Strawberry

Another exciting day in Louisiana. It started with my usual trip into Hammond for my morning latte, then there was a trip to Aldi’s with Sally’s mom. Next, some light yard work at Mom’s before a trip to Livingston for a lunch of burgers and onion rings with son Stuart, his wife Christina, and their kids Max & Evie, along with Christina’s parents at G & J Drive Inn. Another round of yard work before Sally and I headed back to the VRBO to put our feet up for the night.

Hammond, LA Day 5

Chillin’ at the Range

Another exciting day in southern Louisiana. A morning visit to the Dollar Tree with Sally’s mom, followed by a visit from her son Stuart and his wife and children, and finished it off at the gun range with her brother Steve and nephew Brad.

After Sally’s Ring camera went off at 6:30AM yesterday with a stranger poking around her yard back in Santa Fe, she decided to maybe get some sort of gun to deter this type of activity. She really wanted a Red Ryder BB gun but was dissuaded from that angle. Nephew Brad is an ex-policeman and a gun aficionado; he was telling her all about guns and suggested she try one on for size.

Hammond, LA Day 4

Nolo Mia Pizzeria

This is where last night’s pizza came from: Nola Mia Pizzeria in Ponchatoula. What started in a food truck has morphed into a large building that was filled to capacity and had a booming takeout business while I waited on our to-go order. They have a very large wood-fired oven that gets fed by two opposing pizza assembly lines of three people. First, the dough is stretched and placed on a peel, then the sauce and cheese are applied, and finally, the toppings. The cook then slides it onto his long-handled peel to place in the oven.

And after having eaten their pizza I can see why they are where they are. This would be a once a week meal if I lived here.

Hammond, LA Day 3

No Boiled Seafood Allowed

How about fried seafood?

Spent most of the morning wrestling with hooking up a new LED TV for Sally’s mom. It is a Fire TV recommended by her son-in-law. The only way forward past picking out English for your language is signing into Amazon. She wasn’t sure she had an account. We tried signing up using her email – xxxxx.webtv.net – and she had some vague idea of a password once used many a year ago. This, of course, did not work. So I signed in as me, and after setting everything up, I logged out.

The real fun began when I had to replace the small TV in her bedroom, which looked like a 17″ computer monitor, with the 32″ Sharp-Roku TV from the living room. First off, she really doesn’t use the Roku end of it; everything comes in via the HDMI cable from the Direct TV box. To turn on the TV, she uses the Roku remote, then uses the DIRECTV remote to change channels, and then goes back to the Roku remote to control the volume.

The way this TV was working was, they’d turn it on, and when the Roku TV showed the “installing update” whirly thing, the TV would be turned off and then back on to get rid of the update prompt. Unfortunately, there was no way to get to the Roku settings to fix this; the TV booted up to the HDMI input, and hitting the Home button did nothing. When I moved it to the bedroom, for some reason the sound would come on at a level, and it wouldn’t vary with the remote like before. I tried unplugging it for a minute and plugging it back in with no success. I next tried to reset the TV by holding the power button for a minute, but that caused the TV to come back on with a controllable volume but no PICTURE! This went back and forth a couple times, and I threatened to go to Best Buy and get her another new TV.

The internet had told me to reset it by unplugging it for 30 seconds and turning it back on by holding down the power and volume down buttons while plugging it back in; her TV didn’t have any buttons except the power one. So I tied a modified version of it by plugging it in while holding down just the power button. Bingo, bango, bongo; Roku home screen. I hooked it to the wireless network and updated the TV. It now works as it’s supposed to.

Phew, it was touch and go for a while as to who was going to prevail.

The afternoon went much smoother; we took a trip to Home Depot, Sally got her haircut, we took a walk in the park next to the VRBO, and a pizza for dinner.

Hammond, LA Day 2

Fuzzy Ragland Theater

Sally had an appointment with her Edward Jones rep, her nephew Kurt, and while she was in there I was out there doing retail therapy. My first stop was a Walgreens to see if I could get another Ponchatoula Green Wave sweatshirt to replace the one I bought last January because I had stained it. Striking out on that, I did buy some new heads for my electric toothbrush. Next, I headed over to the shopping center near where Sally was at. I bought the latest Jack Reacher book, a pair of shorts (it was 81° today) at Old Navy, and then hit up Foot Locker for some shorty socks because when I washed my new Reno Railroaders hoodie, it turned my white socks pink.

Never did get around to taking a new photo today, so I went back 5 years to date and picked this one for here and Instagram.

Hammond, LA

Sticker Pakage

Leg 3 on the way to Hammond for Turkey Day. Mission accomplished.

About a month ago, after a chance encounter, I designed a sticker to proudly display my new lifestyle. I tweaked it a little and turned it into a 3″ round sticker for the back window. I bought a pack of Avery stickers to print out some, eight to a page. They looked good, but after a couple days in the PNW weather, not so much. I coated my next attempt with some clear coat paint I had, but that lasted just a couple weeks before half melting into sadness. I needed to get some real vinyl ones made up, then promptly forgot about it.

Fast forward a bit, and while scrolling through Instagram, what should randomly1 appear but an ad for something called StickerApp. I clicked on it expecting to find out I would need to order 100 minimum for a couple hundred bucks, but instead I could get twenty-five for under $25 with free shipping. Their template was a breeze compared to the Avery one, and in minutes I’d PayPal-ed them the money. I had them shipped to Sally’s mom’s house here in Hammond, and they arrived ahead of me by only a couple of hours.

Now I have to wait a week and a half to stick one on the car because it is back in Santa Fe.

Palestine, TX

Downtown Palestine, TX


 
Leg 2 on the way to Hammond for Turkey Day.

Today’s drive was a lot prettier than yesterday and a little shorter. If your route happened to go through the middle of downtown Palestine, you’d see a lot of this because, as most larger Texas towns have done, there is a thriving section of national chain stores all along the bypass. All that is left in town are around a dozen churches, a half dozen “antique” stores, and a couple restaurants. There is the required large wall-sized mural with the town name with an uplifting saying to go with several art pieces.

We went downtown, hence the art piece photos above, to eat dinner at the Home Grill Steakhouse, and I can definitely recommend it for a good meal from its extensive menu.