San Antonio Fiesta — April 2026

Link to more photos. (And see below for a separate photo album of Fiesta royalty.) As always, view the photos individually to see the captions.

I hadn't been to any Fiesta events since I was a kid, and Victor, of course, had never been. Also, Fiesta has grown quite a bit over the years. When I was young, I remember only two parades, the Battle of Flowers and the Flambeau. Now there's an additional nighttime river parade, a Band Fest, a carnival, and minor events.

Earlier this year, after successfully purchasing tickets for three parades and the Band Festival, I thought, "Now I only have to hope it doesn't rain." Alas, as we left L.A. for San Antonio, the forecast showed rain likely much of the week. Sigh.

Sure enough, the first event for which I had bought tickets ($35 each), the Monday night Texas Cavaliers River Parade, was canceled due to a flash flood warning just two hours before it was scheduled to begin. No refunds, either; the money goes to charity.

One block from our motel, at night, I saw multi-colored changing lights on freeway columns. (See the photos.) I discovered it was Light Channels by Bill FitzGibbons.

Despite the rain early in the week, at least the meals with friends would continue. On Tuesday, we had lunch with my cousin Rochelle and dinner with two friends. Similar outings on Wednesday and Friday.

But on Saturday, Rochelle's son sent me a message that his mother died Friday morning! Apparently a stroke.

The Band Festival was entertaining. The finale had 4100 musicians from more than 40 high schools on the field playing together (see my 19-second video of that), followed by fireworks. Plus, my alma mater, Jefferson HS, won two awards. (Scroll down on this webpage to see the award winners.)

As we left the Band Fest, we experienced the first of two Uber refusals! I asked for Uber, and was notified of the driver and updated on his arrival. But when it said he would arrive in 1 minute, Uber suddenly said, "Searching for another driver" and we had to wait another 14 minutes! The same thing happened a few days later!

The Battle of Flowers parade began in 1891. It remains the highlight of Fiesta. Nowadays, it features a plethora of titled "royalty". The titles are pretty wild; here are a few: 

• Duchess of Luxurious Textile Motifs
• Duchess of Ornamental Supremacy
• Duchess of Oceanic Synchronicity
• Duchess of Panoramic Perfection
• Duchess of Exemplary Urban Splendor
• Duchess of Unconventional Resilience

Their gown trains are enormous, and these women are almost always wearing cowboy boots! Click here for a photo album (mostly from the Fiesta program book).

The Flambeau Parade is touted as "America's Largest Illuminated Night Parade". Another fun event.

The King William District is a Texas State Residential Historic District. At the end of Fiesta Week, they have a Fair, including a parade. This parade has some quirky entries -- lots of dogs, including the San Antonio Corgi Club, a Star Wars Society, a Roper Romp of orange-wigged women in kaftans mimicking Helen Roper from Three's Company. (I never heard of Mrs. Roper and had to look this up), and several gay-related groups. See the photos.

Las Vegas — April 2026

 

Link to more photos. (As always, view the photos individually to see the captions.)

We took a quick group tour to Las Vegas, mainly to see The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere. It was a bus trip, only two nights and one full day in Las Vegas.

It was raining as we left Los Angeles, but it stayed dry in Las Vegas and when we returned. We stayed at Paris Hotel and Casino, and had good views of the Eiffel Tower and, across the street, the Fountains of Bellagio.

In our short free time, we walked two blocks to view some of the art at Aria's Shops at Crystals. It was easy to see the Turrell work and the Treehouse Restaurant (see the photos) and a few others, but the Halo water feature I was looking forward to was not operating. Here's someone else's 40-second video of that.

Getting the bus parked and getting to our seats at the Sphere was a minor ordeal, but I did enjoy the re-mastered, AI-enhanced film on the 160,000 sq. ft. screen, complete with immersive multisensory effects like tornado wind, scents, moving seats, flying monkeys, and falling "leaves" and "apples". An apple fell right in my lap (see the photos).

Scammers

 

Although I've used craigslist before with no problems, I've now had two bad experiences, one as a buyer and one as a seller.

I previously wrote about the seller who was a fraud and cost me a large amount of money in 2024.

Now, a buyer has tried to cheat me. It was close, but I avoided this one:

Someone replied to a craigslist ad I posted, sent a large check so I could pay $2190 to the person who was going to pick up my item and transport it to another state. 

The buyer kept pushing to speed this all up, but fortunately, I waited long enough to see my bank reporting that the check was bad!

Poetry Analysis

Early in my freshman English class at Rice, we were asked to write a brief analysis of a specific poem. Mine received a mediocre grade, and the grad student Teaching Assistant explained that I had completely ignored the obvious Christian religious symbolism.

Well, duh. Not being a Christian, it wasn't obvious to me. 

But that convinced me: for the rest of the semester, I adapted Cliffs Notes analyses and got better grades. 

And I took no further English courses.

Gay Club Matchbooks and Pins

 

Back in the day, I had this modest collection of matchbooks from gay bars and discos.

At the Los Angeles Central Library in 2018, I saw a display of similar matchbooks from ONE Archives. I wrote and asked if they wanted mine. They did, and I donated these.

I also gave them these gay pins and buttons:

Flowers — April 2024

 [I don't know why I didn't write this up at the time.]

Link to many more photos. Definitely worth viewing.

In April 2024, we went on a one-day tour to see flowers in northern San Diego County, specifically, at the Self-Realization Fellowship Meditation Gardens in Encinitas and the Flower Fields in Carlsbad.

The tour, Petals and Peace, from Good Times Travel, is no longer offered.

Click this photo to read the caption:

Autographs — John Sayles

 

John Sayles spoke at Vromans Bookstore this evening.

(index to autographs)

Too many bowl games

I wrote this on Facebook recently:

My alma mater Rice lost a bowl game today. It's crazy stupid that a team WITH A LOSING RECORD even gets into a bowl game! That degrades all bowl games. Rice's season record was 5-7! After today's loss, 5-8! Clearly, there are WAY too many bowl games.

Later that day, I thought, "I should have sent it to the newspaper." So I sent it to the LATimes sports section. They did not print it.

Tucson — November 2025

Mine tourists

Link to more photos. View the photos individually to see the captions.

We took a group tour to Tucson and vicinity. It went pretty well. The weather was good. We stayed at a resort hotel, but had no time to use the resort facilities. Also, oddly, the only evening dining options were the limited bar menu or room service. They apparently expect guests to eat dinner elsewhere, but our group schedule didn't include dinner stops, so were stuck with the hotel. And because the hotel is rather isolated, there were no nearby restaurants to walk to, either.

We began with a morning tour of the city. That included a stop at Mission San Xavier del Bac, but I didn't go in. In the afternoon, we went to the Titan Missile Museum, going underground to the launch control center, including a simulated launch, and viewing a Titan II missile in the launch duct.

Tombstone was not for me. The tourist street was like many others, and I'm not much into the famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral, especially not in triplicate: first a short movie about it, then the actual site, looking at eight mannequins of the participants and listening to a recording telling the story again, followed by a reenactment with live actors. Plus the next day, our tour director showed the 1957 movie about it (Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas) on the bus. Sigh. 

I did like the adjacent C.S. Fly's Photo Gallery of mostly 1880s photos.

Next was the Copper Queen Mine tour, wearing hard hats, safety vests, and carrying miner's headlamps, riding an original mine train, straddling a bench seat, into the mine. At several stops, our retired miner guide told us about mining and miners' work, tools, and lives. 

On our way to and from Tombstone and the mine, we passed the 'Boneyard' the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base — over 4000 out-of-service military aircraft in row after row, sitting alongside the highway.

Because of the federal government shutdown, we could not tour Saguaro National Park, but we took photos nearby. Our substitute stop was the Tucson Botanical Gardens. I liked the butterfly pavilion and the masses of marigolds in the Frida Kahlo garden.

Kartchner Caverns was OK, but they had some very annoying rules: 

• no cameras or smartphones (!!) (Nope, I have no photos.)
• "no food or drink past this point" at the door of Visitor Center (?!) but despite that, when I asked, they said a water bottle is OK, as long as it has a cap, and they couldn't explain the contradiction
• leave all purses and bags in a locker, and the lockers aren't free (!!) and require four quarters (who has that?!!) and there's no change machine (!!) and you have to go inside to ask for quarters in exchange for bills (!!) 

GRRR.

We spent one morning at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum — part zoo, aquarium, botanical garden, and natural history museum.

At Biosphere 2, I particularly liked the lung, a cylindrical tank containing a flexible membrane attached to a heavy metal plate, which rises and falls to equalize pressure. I was also looking forward to seeing the ocean, but there wasn't much to see. 

Victor's retirement funds

Black hole of paperwork

In December 2023, when Victor turned 60, he received a letter from AFORE, the government-mandated company that manages pension funds, saying he had nearly $10,000 (USD) in retirement funds!

We began a l-o-n-g series of trips to various offices tracking down different needed paperwork: his official identification number, his tax ID card, opening a bank account, papers only available from one specific distant office, his original birth certificate, his official police record, and more.

Additional time-consuming complications: several times at different agencies, computers were down; several times, he was told the next step would take maybe fifteen days, after we would be back in L.A.; many steps had to be done in person, not online nor by anyone else (such as Victor's niece); because we are married, he had to change his listed beneficiary from his niece to me; some appointments made online disappeared; some of his signed papers had to be sent to Mexico City first; one time when he signed on a computer screen, they said his signature was insufficiently similar to that on his ID, so he had to go get a new ID. 

It really did seem like they made up requirements to avoid paying out money.

After he got an initial deposit in his bank account, AFORE said there was some police investigation and Victor began another round of pointless visits to multiple police agencies.

Months went by with no new deposit. When we were next in Mérida, they sent him for another police report. After that, they needed a new bank statement. 

Finally, they said deposits would resume in a month, and they did! And they have continued monthly.

WHEW! What an ordeal.