Meet The 'Sita
- Michael Jay Tucker's explosive-cargo
- 5 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Happy New Year, everyone! And I hope 2026 is a great one for all of us!
But I’m going to start the near year off with something different. I’m going to do a quick series on my newest toy--The Casita.
As you know, we recently got a small outbuilding in our backyard, the Casita, which is now my office. I’m going to write about how that came to be. It sounds like a weird topic, I know, but it was a real-life adventure with a couple of twists and turns in things. Plus a few moments of high comedy. Plus... one other moment of genuine national tragedy.
So that’s what’s a comin’. Git yerself fixed fer it.
About the Photos: First, a shot of the Casita. This is just after it was completed in September 2024. I’m sitting in it right now. (Note: yes, that’s a Biden-Harris sign in front. I am nothing if not stubborn.) Second, to give you a feel for Georgetown, here’s a shot of the Courthouse, which sort of forms the heart of downtown. And, finally,one of the cooler things that G’town does is host a poppy festival each year. And here is Martha among some of them. This was back in 2021 when she was still recovering from a bit of wrist repair.
The tale of the little blue cozy Casita starts way back in 2019. It was just after we had moved to Texas. We needed to be near the kids -- they were in Austin -- but we didn’t want to be underfoot either. There’s being a helpful, accessible grandparent...and there’s being a pain in the, ah, wisteria. Nothing worse than being a pain in the wisteria. You betcha.(1)
So, we didn’t want to be in Austin itself since we didn’t want to be *too* close. Plus...well, bluntly, we just couldn’t afford to live in the city. In 2020, Austin was (and still is) one of the fastest growing cities in America.(2) Housing prices had gone through the roof (no pun intended, but I’ll take it) and the city just wasn’t in our price range.
So we moved instead to Georgetown, which in recent decades has become a sort of suburb for Austin. Lots of commuters here. However, *because* it is so close to Austin, it is also growing rapidly.(3) Which meant when we got here, housing stock was extremely limited. Which meant that we were real lucky to find a wonderful little house that we really, really love.
But...as much as we like our house... it’s just a tad bit too small. We could have used one more room. As it was, Martha and I ended up sharing the guestroom as a kind of joint office.
Which was...er...um...ah...a problem because...stammer, blush...I mumble when I work. I mean, when I’m writing, I’m constantly reading aloud what I’ve just written. Or what I will write shortly.
So...pretend...for a moment...if you wouldn’t mind...that you are Martha. You are trying to get some work done. You are on your computer. You are trying to write something. Or you’re working on something for your bookclub. Or you just want to have a moment of peace and quiet.
But, wait! What’s that you hear in the background? It’s something like:
Mumble, mumble...”Battle of Manzikert,”...mumble, rumble...”and controlled THERMO-nuclear fuSION”...rumble, bumble, sound like a steam train going by...”and THEN Dorothy Parker said to the”...rumble, rumble, sound like a helicopter landing.... “and then Xeno-trans-plan-tation”... bumble, rumble, noise like a Hippo with nasal congestion...
Well, you get the point. It’s a bit problematic to share space with me. One might even say it requires the patience of Job. Or noise canceling earphones. Six of one. Thirty-seven of the other.
Okay, maybe that’s not quite fair. Maybe I’m not really *that* awful as an office mate.(4) But Martha did want to give me space. And frankly I wanted to give her space, too. I wanted her to have her own office, as well as a place in which to pursue her various projects -- sewing, bead-work, jewelry, and such like.
So, finally, one day, about six months after we arrived, she turned to me and I turned to her, and we said, almost simultaneously, “Let’s build a Casita.”
We each agreed it was a great idea and said we’d do it.
How were we to know that we had just signed on for a five year-long process that would, before it was all done, involve: money, rats, more money, mice, Covid, an ice storm, a week long power failure, still more money, an emergency generator that cost a lot of (guess what) money, Martha getting a hairline fracture in her hip, another ice storm (this time with falling trees and tree limbs), a serious guilt trip, a whole bunch o’other stuff that I won’t go into, and, then, finally, after all that...
At last.
Getting it done.
So, stay tuned. Lots more to come.
Footnotes:
1. Okay, maybe being a pain in the asphodel would be worse. But only marginally.
2. By 2023, Austin had been the fastest growing city in the United States for 12 years in a row. It’s lost that questionable distinction now, but it is still growing really, really fast. See “ Austin metro is fastest-growing in the country for 12th year in a row,” by Christopher Adams, KXAN, Posted: Dec 12, 2023 / 01:02 PM CST, Updated: Dec 12, 2023 / 01:06 PM CST. https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/austin-metro-is-fastest-growing-in-the-country-for-12th-year-in-a-row/
Part of the problem is that Austin has emerged as kind of a Silicon Valley East, as high tech companies and their founders leave California in search of lower taxes (or none at all) in Texas. And one of the idées fixes of the Tech-Bros at the moment is not dying. Or, at least staving it off for a few centuries and not getting older in the process. I’m not sure any of them have come up with a direct pipeline to the Fountain Of Youth, but they’re giving it a shot. Amazing what you can do with top-drawer medical care, vitamin supplements, and just a tiny, teensy, itty-bitty, soupçon of facial surgery.
Anyway, for more on the issue, go here: “Inside Silicon Valley’s high tech quest for eternal youth,” by Anna Fielding, Spears Magazine, February 27, 2023, Updated 14 Mar 2023 9:44pm, https://spearswms.com/wealth/silicon-valley-ageing-technology-youth/
3. Yep. Georgetown, too, is one of the fastest growing communities in the US. In fact, it was *the* fastest growing city in the US at one time. See: “Large Southern Cities Lead Nation in Population Growth,” US Census Bureau, May 18, 2023 Press Release Number: CB23-79, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/subcounty-metro-micro-estimates.html
4. Just almost.
Addendum:
So someone asked me what all the gibberish meant in the section above in which I was talking while working. Okay. Fine. If you *really* wanna know, here tis:
1. The Byzantine Empire and the Battle of Manzikert: Byzantium was the name given by Western historians to the Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire. When Rome fell, The Greco-Roman East continued on quite successfully for another thousand years or so. It controlled much of Anatolia, what is today’s Turkey (it’s capital, Constantinople, is today’s Istanbul) and part of the Balkans.
In 1071, near the town of Manzikert, the Byzantines lost a climatic battle to the Seljuk Turks. It was one of the most decisive battles in history and it cost the Empire its vast Anatolian heartland.
In our world, the Byzantines tried to win back their lost territories with the help of soldiers from Western Europe -- i.e., the Crusades. In the long run, unfortunately, the Crusaders would do more damage to the Byzantine Empire than the Turks could dream of. The Fourth Crusade actually resulted in the sack of Constantinople.
However, there was an alternative to that depressing scenario. Even after Manzikert, Byzantium still held most of today’s Bulgaria and much of the eastern Balkans. So, suppose...just for the sake of counterfactual supposition...the Byzantines had abandoned their hopes of regaining Anatolia and had focused instead on their territories in Southeastern Europe? Could Byzantium have survived? Maybe even to the present day?
2. Thermonuclear Fusion: This is the process by which certain types of atoms combine and give up energy. It is the way that the Sun and stars produce energy--where hydrogen atoms are crushed by gravity into helium ones... giving up an enormous amount of light, heat, and so on along the way. It also shows up, less benignly, in the H-Bomb.
We’ve been trying now for decades to get fusion to work in an industrial setting. So far, we haven’t managed it. But we seem to be getting closer and closer. I’ve heard speculation that we’ll finally have it in operation in ten years or less.
The thing of it is, when that happens, humanity will have vast amounts of electrical power available to it. What will having all those cheap kilowatts available do to our civilization? Which, let’s face it, is as dependent on oil, gas, and coal as Medieval Europe was based on the horse, the ox, and the serf?
3. Dorothy Parker was, of course, one of the great wits of American literature in the 1920s. It was she who is said to have said, “I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money.”
4. Xenotransplantation: this is “the transplantation of living cells, tissues or organs from one species to another” (to quote Wikipedia). I’m terribly excited about this emerging technology. If we could breed animals and use them to produce the organs we need for transplant purposes, we could save countless lives.
Copyright©2026 Michael Jay Tucker
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