Austin Images – Page 9

Unos momentos desde mi Cinco de Mayo.

Hola! Happy Cinco de Mayo. Before I forget, I want to post this shot that I took yesterday. I took it with my waterproof camera from the kayak, so I wasn’t able to upload it until today. This is Nirvana and Sapphire at anchor. Pretty boats.

Today I paddled completely around Arky South cove. I enjoy paddling. But I like, even more, cruising along the shore for found objects. Today’s haul: 4 plastic bobbers, 1 popper jig, 1 croppie tube jig, and 2 nice docklines with spliced loops.

Then we pulled up the anchor and sailed for several hours. We sailed along with Kalliopi (with Nick and his kids on-board) for a while. Then we turned around and caught a glimpse of Lori, Joe, Wally and Kelly on Camelot, with her newly raised 150 whomper jib. I think Lori’s getting serious now, ever since Nirvana beat Camelot in a beer can a couple weeks ago. 🙂

On the way home, we saw this guy riding along 620. Amazing. It appears to be direct drive, no evidence of a chain. And, I have no idea how he stops / dismounts this thing – that front tire is about 5′ in diameter.

Lance, is that you?f — Lance, is that you?

And, now back home, we are celebrating Cinco de Mayo with Julie. Salud!

Postponed.

We’ve been counting down to tonight, to go to a concert with Marty & Sue at the new Circuit of the America’s racetrack concert venue called the 360 Amphitheater: Jimmy Buffet + Jackson Browne!

The last time Jimmy Buffet played a show Austin was 17 years ago at the (no longer there) Southpark Meadows. I was at that show, and have been looking forward to tonight’s show as well.

So we all headed out together in parrot head garb, and stopped to eat at Chuy’s before the show. It was there that we learned, an hour before the gates opened, that the concert had been postponed on account of high winds, until tomorrow night. A cold front came through early this morning and the winds have been blowing 20-40 miles all day, and will continue through the night.

Ok, I guess we’ll do it all again tomorrow!

‘Tis Tuesday.

We have another niece visiting us this week. Rachel and Monte went out to the lake and sailed for a few hours. Then Julie and I joined them about 4 o’clock. We sailed around for a couple more hours. Then got a great table at the Oasis. And surprisingly enjoyed the appies that we ordered. The view of sunset was awesome, as usual. Very, very nice!

A Saturday drive.

For the last 15 years, Becker Vineyards has had a Lavender Festival. Its been one of the things on my todo list. This year, i put it on my calendar several months ago, so I wouldn’t miss it. And, it worked! Today we headed out for a long drive through the hill country, in the miata with the top down. And we had a really great day…

We walked out through the lavender fields. They have several different varieties. It didn’t look quite like I had expected – i was imagining endless rows of deep purple, like in Provence. But it was pretty, nonetheless.

They also grow their own artichokes. I have never seen them in the wild before!

13042702 — Artie chokes three for a dollar 🙂

We walked through the vendor booths. Lots of lavender goodies, flowers, herbs, nibblies and such. 13042703

Then one more walk through the fields, this shot is looking back at the winery. 13042704

We packed a light lunch and ate it at the festival while sipping wine and listening to the Raggedy Cats (we really enjoyed them).

Then a winery tour. Lots of new factoids. Becker has been here 20 years or so, and in that time, they’ve increased the amount of their wine that they make from grapes grown at the winery to 85%. The rest come from Lubbock. 13042705

Can’t wait for the Fredericksburg peach harvest! 13042706

On the way home we decided to dodge the brewing thunderstorms and buzzed over to Der Lindenbaum in Fredericksburg for some German home cooked food for dinner.

The festival is open tomorrow, too. Get out there if you can, this year or next!

Mmm mango marg.

I love Saturdays. And I love Chuy’s mango margaritas. Monte prefers their Texas martinis. A good combo. After dinner we took a walk around the hood.

Down at the Armadillo.

‘Tis the season for the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar!! This is the 37th year of the Bazaar. If you go, you can find local artists showing and selling their wares (over 150 artists this year), live music on a stage in the center of the hall, and food/drinks to fortify you as you make the rounds. If you are anywhere near Austin between now and Christmas Eve, check it out.

While I was there tonight, Marcia Ball and Kimmie Rhodes shared the stage from 8-10pm – great music! Here’s the obligatory shot from the floor…

Just playin’ a round.

111912 — Looking back at the 17th hole (I think).

We made a trip down to southeast Austin to run an errand or two this morning. Since we were heading down there, we planned to play a round of golf at Jimmy Clay Golf Course. So, we loaded our clubs into the car on our way out.

We played 18 holes. Not only has it been a while since we played golf together. It’s been a very long time since we played 18. We usually play a twilight 9 holes after work. But we got there early enough today to hit the range, the chipping and putting greens, and then play a full round. We even got a cart today… a treat… as we usually walk it.

It was a nice day – sunny with highs in the 70’s. I wasn’t quick enough to get a photo, but when we got there, we found a big flock of Monk parakeets (aka Quaker parrots) in residence at the golf course. They were noisily greeting golfers from the oak trees around the clubhouse. When we finished our round, they had gone – they must have returned to their nest for the evening.

A nice day.

Hmmm. What’s wrong with this picture? 🙂

Taking the day off.

My sister leaves tomorrow, so I took the afternoon off to play hooky with her. We started off buying beads at a bead shop to get supplies for making jewelry thingies. No pics of that – a project for another day. Then we headed to Zilker Park for a hike on the Barton Creek Greenbelt Trail. It was really lovely out. High 70’s and sunny. Perfect for a hike. The creek is mostly dry. We did see lots of flowers, butterflies and dragonflies.

The orange butterfly in the shot below stopped to let me take several shots.

1008125 — Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae).

Later on down the trail this swallowtail stopped to let me do the same thing.

1008126 — Eastern tiger swallowtail (papilio glaucus?).

I found a pretty good butterfly guide website to try to identify them. You might want to bookmark for future reference.

After the hike we stopped by Barton Springs Pool. Such a pretty place. The pool was beautifully clear.

Then we ran over to Sno-Beach for a must-have best-snocone-ever experience. You’d better hurry, they close at the end of October for the winter. Go out and get one!

Then. Back to Zilker to rent a kayak and tootle around Town Lake (ok, sorry “Lady Bird Lake.” old habits die hard). We paddled all the way to the South 1st Street bridge. On our paddle back we passed 3 UT Women’s Crew boats training.

The Austin City Limits Music Festival takes place this weekend. It’s a 3 day music extravaganza hosted in Zilker Park. Everything is setup and just about ready for the throngs of festival-goers. I took the opportunity to take a quick shot of the festival entrance, so I wouldn’t have to come down here with 75,000 of my closest friends to get the shot this weekend.

What a great Austin afternoon!

Big finale.

We went to a Round Rock Express baseball game tonight. On Friday nights they have a post-game fireworks show. We had great seats right along the 3rd base line. The game didn’t end well, but the fireworks sure did.

TGIF!!!!

A day to remember.

On this Memorial Day, we spent several hours with friends at the marina. We are actually just starting to look at boats for sale. We looked at 2 sloops on E-dock today. Time will tell how long it will take us to find a successor to our beloved Cupholder 🙂

Speaking of Cupholder, we sailed the slip with Marty, Sue, Joe and Wally, and then headed home.

We had just enough energy left in us to buzz downtown for dinner at Taverna, and stopped by to see Willie along the way.

Pizza and Pils.

My niece is moving to Austin to attend grad school at UT. She and her brother drove down from Seattle, and arrived on Friday. We’ve enjoyed visiting with them for the last few days. Tonight we drove down to South Congress to meet them for dinner, and afterwards watched the bats fly out from under the Congress Avenue Bridge.

We enjoyed an ATX double header: Home Slice Pizza and Austin Beerworks Pearl Snap Pils. Yum!

One fine evening.

I had a nice time last night. First, dinner at the Grove Wine Bar. Can you believe that appetizer plate?! I had wine flight #1, bubblies from Italy & France. Monte had flight #8, Italian reds. The cappuccino afterwards was almost too pretty to drink, but I’m glad I did, it was one of the best I’ve had in a long time.

Then we headed to One World Theatre for the Diane Schuur concert, which was great. She played for about 2 hours… with someone on drums, sax and bass. She sang numbers from Duke Ellington, Chuck Mangione, Stevie Wonder, and Patsy Cline, to name a few, and ended with Amazing Grace, one of my favorites.

A lovely evening, indeed.

Eastside eats.

Tonight I went out to dinner with some friends to celebrate a couple of birthdays. We picked a place in East Austin for tonight – Justine’s on E 5th – a casual french bistro. It was my first time here. The food and wine was delicious. I recommend the scallops, though the sauce was a tad bit spicy.

The place was crowded and hopping after about 8 o’clock. And it got very noisy by the time we left about 9:30. Apparently this is a hot spot hangout for lots of the beautiful people in town. 🙂

It’s starting to get warm these days, but it was still cool enough to sit outside. In their courtyard they had a huge neon sign of a burlesque dancer that I wish turned out better, but here ’tis.

Happy Birthday to Irene & Lori!

Dinner and a movie.

We rarely go out to a movie, choosing instead to watch them at home on the DVR. When we do go out, we go to the Alamo Drafthouse, where we can eat dinner and have a few drinks while watching the movie.

Last night, we saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It’s a book that I have started reading several times, but have yet to finish. Ususally I don’t want to see a movie until I’ve read the book it’s based on. But for this one, I was willing to bend the rule. Monte has read several of the books in this series, ravenously. So, he was eager to see it.

** Spoiler Alert **

I liked the movie, it has a very complicated story line and set of characters. I’m all for realism and all, but ….. I have to say that I just can’t appreciate the “art” associated with acting out a rape scene in a movie. Yeah. I guess I’m just old school – and getting older school it seems.

I think, tonight, catching up on episodes of season 1 of Downton Abbey is much more my speed. 🙂

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