“Retired” is a state of mind. Monte has been working every day out in the shop making sawdust and pretty furniture. This is his latest project, one of a pair of LP cabinets. Made out of beautiful walnut with a gorgeous custom finish. He designed and built them. Quite the craftsman!
The drawers have heavy duty full bottom-mounted slides. And he designed an angled, adjustable back-stop for each drawer.
Below is the “before” picture 🙂
I wonder what’s next?!
What a nice weekend! Saturday we (Julie, Monte and I) headed to the lake. We raced in the Beer Can for the first time on Nirvana. Let’s just say we have room for improvement 🙂 We came in 4th though!
Afterwards we anchored in Arky South for the night. Just us this time. Today we picked up the anchor around 11:30 and sailed to the yacht club and back. Julie took the helm for the first half of the trip. She’s a natural.
Back in the slip we floated and visited with Joe, Marty and Wally.
I can’t wait til the upcoming long Labor Day weekend!
Why, yes I am.
I’m on my way to San Fran for a week of meetings. Before I left the house today Monte sang a verse or two of “Are You Going to San Francisco?” (youtube link here). You know it, i’m sure…
If you’re going to San Francisco…
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair….
If you’re going to San Francisco…
You’re going to meet some gentle people there…
For those who come to San Francisco…
Summertime will be a love-in there…
Checking my email during the flight I got a note from Monte telling me that the guy that sang that song, Scott McKenzie had died. R.I.P. Scott.
Kind of a coincidence, i suppose. Anyway, that song is in my head now for a while. So, i thought I’d spread it around.
I’m pretty sure I will not run across the summertime love-in on this trip. Maybe next time. But I definitely will try to find some flowers to put in my hair. 🙂
Whew, what a long week. Monte has also had a long and HOT week, working in the shop all day, every day this week in 100 degree temps.
I was happy to hear the blender fire up at about 5:30.
TGIF, and have a great weekend everyone!
When we adopted Keeto last year, he was approximately 6 weeks old. Based on that we guesstimated his birthday to be August 15. Today marks the completion of his first lap around the sun. Happy Birthday birdie!
On one of my trips out to the shop in the wayback part of the yard today to see what Monte was up to, I encountered this little art exhibit.
He’s been talking about wanting to make a sundial. But I don’t think this is it.
The story behind the shot: Monte is very fond of colored bandanas / hankies, and won’t get dressed without having one or two of these in his pocket. He uses them for pretty much everything. Well, last weekend he declared that he was running low and came back from a shopping run with a couple dozen bright, crisp, new colored bandanas. They bleed profusely, though for the first 5 – 10 washes. So he’s taken to washing them in a bucket of saltwater to set the colors. This is apparently the drying cycle for the latest batch. 🙂
It’s Sunday night, and the end of another great weekend. Yesterday my cousin Devitt and Aunt Joanne came over for a breakfast visit with Monte, Julie and I. Monte made french omelettes, Julia Child style. And we tried our hand at a potato recipe that we got from Devitt:
Browned Breakfast Potatoes
Large cast iron skillet
8 oz bacon, cut into 1-2″ pieces
3 large potatoes, peeled and diced into 1/2″ cubes
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Salt & pepper
Cook bacon, onions and garlic in large cast iron skillet until browned. Discard bacon fat from pan. Add potatoes, salt & pepper. Cook another 10 minutes or so over medium heat on the stovetop. Then place skillet, uncovered, in 425 degree oven for 20 minutes. Lower temperature to 350 and cook for another 10 minutes.
Serve and savor!
Afterwards, Julie headed home to study up for the last final exam of Summer session (good luck!), and we packed for the lake.
We planned to raft-up with friends overnight to watch the Perseids meteor shower. We made it to the cove by about 5pm and set our first anchor on the new boat. It was a good set. We were soon joined by Joe on Prelude, Rory & Greg on Sapphire, Nick, Laurene & Morgan on Kalliopi, and Kurt & Kevin on Dancer. Everyone was tied up by the time the golden hour was upon us. The shot above is of the 5 boats, stern to the sunset. Nirvana is in the middle.
After dinner and stories from the day, everyone grabbed a cushion and laid on the bow of their boats to watch for meteors. It wasn’t a knock-out show, but we did get to see some good ones. The night was peppered with random shouts of “There’s one!” every 10 or 15 minutes.
This morning everyone floated for a while and then people started peeling off at about noon. I’m pleased to report that we got the anchor up with little problem. I am loving the electric windlass to bring up the chain and anchor!
Monte and I sailed ALL afternoon. The breezes started out sluggish but filled in to some great wind that we haven’t seen in a long time on the lake. At about 3:30 we dropped sail and picked up Devitt at Arky cove to take him out for a sail. He did great, taking the helm as Monte and I worked the lines. We dropped him off back at the park around 5:30 and headed back to the marina.
By the time we got home several hours later we were pleasantly exhausted.
I can’t wait to get out there again. Friday soon come!
Yay Friday! Made it through another week. Got a very early start.
Monte worked in the shop all day. After work we picked up Julie and went out for Indian.
I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend. I hope yours is, as well.
My cousin and Aunt will be visiting tomorrow morning. After that we’ll be headed to the lake.
Late tomorrow night, Saturday, August 11, and early morning Sunday, August 12, the Perseids Meteor shower hits its peak. In Austin the moon won’t rise until about 3AM, so I’m hoping we’ll have a great view and get to see some good burners. There’s supposed to be 30-50 meteors an hour. We’ll be watching from our boat, anchored up in a dark cove on the lake. 🙂 If you want to take a peek as well, here’s a link with more info on where and when to look.
The shot above is of yet another zinnia in the garden. Have a great weekend!
Have you ever known of a parakeet that comes when you call it? Monte and I think it’s a pretty cool trick. Working from home today, I left Keeto in the kitchen on his perch in the window. My office is all the way on the other side of the house down a hall with several doors off of it. After a while I called Keeto… and aimed the camera at the door. It wasn’t too long that I heard him flapping down the hall and caught a few pics of him coming into my office… landing on my hand a couple seconds later.
The pictures aren’t too good. He repeated the trick a few times and I used a couple of different shutter speeds. This was the best sequence I captured.
It’s a bird… no, it’s a plane… no, it IS a bird. Pretty bird!
We buzzed over to Chuy’s for dinner tonight. Since we live so close, we eat there often. We have mastered the art of timing our arrival before the after-work happy hour and dinner rush. 🙂
Chuy’s uses those old timey wax paper sanitary wrappers for their silverware. On the back they’ve printed multi-denomenational prayers of grace. It seems so out of place in our world today. But it’s a reminder for us to give thanks for what we have, and for what we are about to eat.
It also caused me to reflect on the dinner times from my childhood. In my family, we sat down for dinner together every night. No TV, no radio. No books or newspapers at the table. We said grace out loud, together. We had to have a little bit of everything on our plate. We had to clean our plate before we were finished (or we’d sit there as long as it took until we did finish), and we had to ask “may I be excused?” before we were allowed to get up, clear our place and leave the table.
Was that really that long ago?
May we all be a little more thankful for our many blessings.
We made pizza for dinner tonight. 4 doughs. I didn’t get a picture of the first one – with homemade pesto, olives, and parmesan cheese. Delicious! Pizza 2 was a margherita with homemade sauce with tomatoes from the garden, homegrown basil, and mozzarella cheese. Pizza 3 was red sauce, proscuitto, black olives, onions and mozzarella, and pizza 4 was red sauce, artichoke hearts, red bell peppers, olives and mozzarella cheese.
The best part of pizza night are the leftovers.
Julie and I watched Wanderlust tonight. You guys will just have to watch it and judge for yourselves. 🙂
TGIF!!!!
I’m off of work for the rest of the week (YAY!). We headed to the lake today for a raftup with friends in Arky south. We’ve got the coolers packed, and the kayak on the trailer, and we’re off!
This is a shot of one of the zinnias out back. They’re so pretty!
After being out of town all last week, it’s nice to be home this week — for lots of reasons. One is that I get to visit with Keeto in the morning. Such a pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty bird.
Keeto will be 1 year old around the middle of August. It’ll be another good excuse to throw a party. 🙂
August 1987. I had just flown across the country to attend graduate school, and moved into a small 1 bedroom apartment. I bought myself a small 3″ potted plant – a dracaena. I thought it would brighten up the place. It didn’t even reach to the bottom of the power outlet when it was sitting on the floor. I christened him Robert Plant.
As I moved from place to place, i dragged Robert along with me – 25 years, 6 moves, 3 states.
In the past few years Robert grew to tower 11 or 12 feet high, with three or four trunks. But, this last winter, I left Robert out one night too many – and he experienced a hard freeze. I thought it was the end for my green friend. He sat in the garage untended all winter and most of the spring with brown leaves, showing no signs of life.
A couple of months ago, we hauled a dead Robert out into the backyard and cut off all his stalks. Monte was thinking about reusing the pot. But we didn’t dump out the pot; left it there for a while, and it was watered along with all the other plants nearby.
And, just a few weeks back, what to my wondering eyes did appear? But a tiny green tuft of leaves growing bigger every day. Robert lives! Welcome back, buddy!
Sheila365 