I’ve mastered the gas oven on the boat. This morning I fired it up and baked blueberry scones for breakfast. We are definitely not roughing it with fresh baked scones and jam. 🙂
(Disclaimer, I’m not a complete Betty-Crocker, though, I use Sticky Fingers scone mix. Just add water. Delicious!)
We raced the beer can today. This time Mark joined us on Nirvana. Wally & Joe sailed on Soul Healer, so we had another 320 to match up against. Lori & Doray sailed on Camelot, and Kurt & Kevin on Dancer. The winds were strong out of the south, which made for a fun sail. We didn’t come in last! Though, we very well could have if it weren’t for Camelot accidentally dropping the main on the last leg (argh!)
Afterwards, we dropped Mark off on E-dock and headed right back out to anchor up in Arky south for the night. We made it in time to admire another sunset in our favorite cove. Lovely.
Wally joined us after dinner on Zen, tying up to us for the night, and we chuckled our way through the evening.
I ran across a DIY post online showing how to tie a Celtic heart knot. So, I tried it and made this little chachki. It needs some work to emphasize the heart shape, but I like it!
If you want to see how to make one, this YouTube video shows you how and is easy to follow.
The other day when my sister and I spent an afternoon running around and playing in downtown Austin, I mentioned that we stopped into a bead shop (Bead It on South Lamar). Over the years, I have assembled a nice set of jewelry-making tools that I use to repair miscellaneous of my favorite purchased pieces that have broken. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at making earrings, bracelets, necklaces, etc, but have never taken that step.
So, when I came home last week with several baggies of beads and earring posts & hangers, I was excited to make a few pairs. These are my very first pieces. Not bad, i think. Hmmmm, could there be an etsy storefront in my future? 🙂
P.s. I’m wearing the purple/amethyst ones as I’m posting this…
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.
Later on down the trail this swallowtail stopped to let me do the same thing.
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!
Even though the chill of Fall is in the air, we, of course, headed to the lake. We raced in the beer can today. We had a great turnout: Wally & Joe on Zen, Kurt & Kevin on Dancer, Lori & Doray on Camelot, Dave and Wiz on MisGuided, and the 4 of us on Nirvana. We got off the start line a minute and a half late (need to work on that). Monte and I, the racing novices that we are, debated re: tactics as we sailed the course (need to work on that, too). 🙂 We didn’t win, place or show, but had fun.
Afterwards we anchored up in Arky South in our usual spot for the night.
My sister is visiting for a week. She took her turn on the winches and at the wheel. Another natural mariner 🙂 Julie joined us, too.
I enjoy it very much when family comes to visit, and when we hit the road to visit family as well. We both come from big families but don’t live close to them. My thoughts are especially on the importance of spending time with family, as I learned that my cousin died unexpectedly and tragically from a pulmonary embolism this week – a complication from relatively routine back surgery a few days before. So sad. So sobering. He had just turned 48 a few weeks back, in the prime of his life, raised a wonderful family, and was an active and accomplished Air Force colonel, getting ready to chart the next phase of his life’s course. I had a chance to visit with him in Seattle last summer. So glad I did.
One more quick post before the clock strikes midnight. We’ve had a lovely anniversary weekend. We capped it off with a concert at One World Theatre tonight, with friends Marty & Sue. We bought tickets months ago for tonight’s show with Jerry Jeff Walker, and we had a great time.
The evening wouldn’t have been complete without hearing Sangria Wine, and we were not sent home disappointed 🙂 It was an extra treat to have Austin musician Chris Gage join Jerry Jeff on lead guitar, mandolin, accordion and backup vocals. Nicely done, Chris!
Have a great week everybody.
This is the last day of Summer 2012. I had a good Summer, I hope you did, too. My advice to you:
Summer’s Almost Gone
Summer’s almost gone (x 2)
Almost gone
Yeah, it’s almost gone
Where will we be
When the summer’s gone?
Morning found us calmly unaware
Noon burned gold into our hair
At night, we swam the Laughing sea
When summer’s gone
Where will we be (x 3)
Morning found us calmly unaware
Noon burned gold into our hair
At night, we swam the Laughing sea
When summer’s gone
Where will we be
Summer’s almost gone (x 2)
We had some good times
But they’re gone
The winter’s comin’ on
Summer’s almost gone
Today is Talk-like-a-pirate Day! So in honor of the occasion, we went to dinner tonight at… Chuy’s! 🙂
We actually went at (ahem) 4PM, because we were both kind of hungry, my previous call had just ended and I had a break before my evening conference calls with colleagues in AP started at 6PM tonight. So, this was the only time we could dash out. Back in the day, when we lived in Florida, we used to make jokes about all the old folks grabbing an early dinner (you know…getting the “blue-hair special”). Well. Now we are them.
Anyway, I did order a mango mAARRRg to celebrate in pirate fashion. And a yummy #8 plate to go with it.
I also snapped a photo of their new lighting. I like the colored glass.
One last post for tonight. We made 3 pizza doughs. A margerita, a proscuitto-mozzarella-blackolive and this delicious one with red pepper and goat cheese. Yum-mee. 2+ pizzas are in the fridge for leftovers this week.
Great weekend!
Yesterday we set out for the lake to raft up with Lori & Dave on Camelot. We put our repaired jib back on. And Julie met us at the slip. We were the only two boats on the lake, i think, given the continued forecast of rain.
We anchored up in Arky south last night, expecting some good downpours after midnight. Lori and Dave hosted us to a delicious spaghetti feast on their boat. Thanks guys!
We played iPod wars for a bit and turned in relatively early. The rain really didn’t start until about 8 AM. And it still hasn’t quit. No complaints here though. The lake is up a total of about 11 inches since Wednesday. Keep it comin!
We played rummy in the cabin for several hours and then headed back to the slip.
Now we’re back home and pizza dough is being whipped up as I type this.
Enjoy what’s left of the weekend!
We spent the night on the boat last night. A cold front came through the area early yesterday and the wind gusted all day out of the North, but fell quiet over night. The temperatures dropped into the 50’s overnight (!)
Today we went for an afternoon sail with Joe, Wally & Kurt joining us. The breezes were light. It was a gorgeous day, with temps in the 80’s. I think the air temperature was a little cooler than the water temp.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think these clouds look a bit wintery…thin and flat instead of puffy and tall. Fall is on the way!
I took a walk down E-dock this morning after scrubbing Nirvana stem to stern. There are some big boats on this dock, and most seem to be used frequently and are well taken care of. There are one or two that haven’t been boarded in many, many years. The photo above is of one boat that has lichens growing all over the top of its deck and cockpit. Sad.
As I was walking along in my flip-flops looking at the boats, and not watching where I was walking, I kicked one of the dock cleats. OW! Luckily just a scrape. A few minutes later, CRACK! I did it again, and this time brought blood. I thought I had broken my toe. That brought an end to my dock walk. Live and learn: no flip-flops on dock walks.
The rest of the day was spent lounging around. Until the afternoon, when the beer can race took place. This week Wally came aboard Nirvana and gave us some lessons in racing a sloop. Kurt and Kevin won on Dancer. Marty & Sue came in 2nd this week. And Monte, Wally & I took third. That’s better than last week when we came in 4th! 😀
The shot below is of Marty & Sue on Caribbean Hug approaching the starting line.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
On this last day of August, the Friday before a long Labor Day weekend, we packed up and headed to the boat after work. We’re staying the night tonight in the slip, and plan to raft up tomorrow night.
This was the lovely sunset that we were treated to. The shot above is from the bow of Nirvana, in our slip. The shot below is of the light from the setting sun lighting up the clouds from the stern. You know what they say… “Red skies at night, sailors’ delight….”
True that.
Sheila365 