After spending any time on a boat, most people come home with various and sundry cuts, bumps, scrapes, sprains and bruises. We call them “unexplainable boat injuries,” or UBIs. This is my latest one. I have no idea when it happened, and it never even hurt. Weird.
Oh, and yes, you’re correct if you think I’m running out of material, and/or trying to avoid the pile of work in my inbox. Both are true today. Have a nice day! 🙂
Happy July 4th! Monte and I are packing for two days and nights on the lake. It’s going to be great! As we were getting ready I heard the Stars and Stripes blaring down the street. We went outside and caught our neighborhood’s annual parade. I love it. Small town awesomeness in the middle of Austin! They do this every year, but this is the first year we have been home on the 4th to see it (!).
why yes, that IS a mop&linen Statue of Liberty going down the street. Don’t you have one of those?
Just a few of the fun characters gathered this weekend for our bi-annual family reunion. Fun!
This has been yet another busy week. But, today is the last day of work for me, as we’re taking a long weekend. Wooo Hooooo!
Tonight I stopped by Mayfield Park on the way to a friend’s house. There are peacocks in residence here, and a couple were putting on a show when I arrived.
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.
And, now back home, we are celebrating Cinco de Mayo with Julie. Salud!
I have been enjoying swimming at the gym, for the last few months. I’m slow and steady, and have worked up to being able to swim a mile in an hour. However, the chlorine is wreaking havoc with my hair, skin, nails and most recently my jewelry. So today I left my rings behind at home – hanging on the cabinet door handle.
Now, i have no idea if the fact that I wasn’t wearing my wedding band had anything to do with it… but I had an interesting encounter in the steam room after my swim. Usually the steam room is full of men and women of all ages, shapes and sizes. Today, however, when I entered the steam-filled room, there was only one other person there. Until today, my experience was that steamroom etiquette was a lot like elevator etiquette – you pretty much keep to yourself and exit when you’re ready.
Today, after about 5 minutes, the one other person in a blue swimsuit walked over to me. Here is the conversation that followed:
blueswimsuit: <mumble mumble>
me: “sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the steam vent”
blueswimsuit: “I said, do you live nearby?”
me: “Yes”
blueswimsuit: “well, would you be interested in giving me a sensual oil massage?”
me: “Uh. No.” <pause> “I don’t think I would be very good at that.”
blueswimsuit: “Oh, its pretty easy, you just rub oil on my shoulders and back.”
me: “No. I wouldn’t be good at doing that. Sorry.”
blueswimsuit: “are you sure?”
me: “very sure, thanks.”
After that, she walked back over to her side of the steamroom and we sat there for another ten minutes by ourselves until another person joined us.
Just another day at the gym, i guess. 🙂
Whew, what a long week! After work I walked around our yard out back to see what I could see. My plumbago is thriving with little to no water, as usual.
The hardest working retiree has been busy this week. He spent an entire day cleaning the house (thanks sweetie!) and today he spent all day tilling and planting his garden out in the way back. Tomatoes, basil, chives, parsley, dill… and zinnies! Can’t wait.
Then I surveyed the trees out back. One day there’s no leaves. The next day they are covered in green.
At the base of this red oak I saw something I’ve never seen. Neon green golf ball sized balls growing on the branches. Very odd. Google tells me they are a sign of oak apple gall. Home to the apple gall wasp larvae till it hatches. Learn something new every day!
Enjoy your weekend!
Seen on a trail in the greenbelt near our house. A lean-to teepee kind of shelter. If it wasn’t so dry here I’d want to make s’mores.
Adieu 2012. Not the best of years. Not the worst.
We celebrated the evening with friends. The murder-mystery theme was fun. It was set in 1969, so the costumes were a bit … far-out, man. I was Enya Goddard-Daveeda, high priestess of the Church of the Vacant Mind. My costume instructions were to wear all white: gogo boots, flowing robe & miniskirt. Can you believe I found knee-high white platform-heeled gogo boots that laced up the back?!! Thank you Goodwill!
It is fun to get a little silly. And we did.
As is the custom, Monte played Auld Lang Syne on the saxophone at midnight, and everyone sang along. We also played an encore out on the front lawn just to make sure noone was asleep.
I don’t exactly know what my resolutions are. I do know that I want 2013 to be a year with a little more peace, love and understanding. I guess we’ll have to figure out what we each should do to make that happen along the way.
Cheers!
We, in the modern and developed “first world,” enjoy luxuries that are inconceivable by those living in developing “third world” nations. In the real scheme of things, any woes that we complain about related to technology are nothing more than noise. But it doesn’t make them less annoying because of that…
Our latest first world problem: when I use the treadmill, our DSL modem drops its connection to the internet.
Ah yes. Quite a quandary. A recent development — and an unacceptable one. Imagine the fun we’ve been having trying to talk to AT&T about it for the last few weeks to get help with troubleshooting. So we’ve been trying to debug our modern conveniences ourselves to find the root cause. We suspect a new DSL modem which we got a few months back (a Netgear), because the old one (a 2wire) worked fine when the very same treadmill was on.
If we plug the treadmill into an outlet on the other side of the house, it does not interfere with the modem. So we could move either the treadmill or the modem. Both of which would be a major pain. So in the mean time, I hope to find another solution… i.e., finding another brand of modem, like the 2wire that we had for many years until it went kaput.
Anyone out there have a better suggestion?
Update: I think we fixed the problem!! (through no help of AT&T, by the way). After a month of trying to figure out what the problem was, in desperation and frustration I dug out our old 2wire DSL router out of the closet. It had worked (and coexisted with the treadmill) for about 10 years before crapping out this summer. When that happened, we replaced it with the AT&T-recommended netgear DSL modem product, which is the one we’re currently struggling with. In the old 2wire DSL modem box I found the original DSL phone line filter dongle thingies that we also replaced when we got the new netgear modem. The ones we got with the netgear modem say “Pace America” brand on them. In a desperate attempt to try just one more thing, I changed out the Pace-America brand DSL phone line filter dongle with the 2wire brand one that we had used with the previous 2wire modem for many years. And…(drum roll) it fixed the problem! I post this update in the hope that it will help some other poor schmuck that has resorted to google for help on how to fix their treadmill / DSL router interference problem.
Best of luck!
We went for another sail yesterday. It was a beautiful, mild day. I took this shot as we were leaving our marina’s cove. It’s a giant cross out in the middle of nowhere on Graveyard Point. It’s at least 15′ tall and made out of steel beams that appeared out of the blue one day a year or two ago. No small feat for whoever put it up overnight. The guys at the marina like to refer to it as the “immaculate erection.” heh heh.
Anyway, it’s hard for me to sail past it without thinking of Him. I thought it was appropriate to post this pic today, on Christmas Eve. A reminder of what it’s supposed to be about.
Have a Merry Christmas with the ones you love!!
‘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…
Over 2 years ago I posted a picture of the catboat wind thingie that monte made me (here’s the original post). It had sails made out of ripstop nylon which I had sewn and installed on each little boat. It worked great, and I LOVED it. As the wind blew, the boats started turning and the sails tacked and jibed as they went around.
Then last summer, I posted a picture of it after it had been attacked by squirrels (here’s that post). One of them went nutso in the heat of the summer and ripped up the sails. And just like that my catboat wind thingie was out of service.
Til today! Monte made new sails out of copper sheets, and fastened them to the mast with copper bands and replaced the string mainsheets with little pieces of metal chain.
It’ll take a stiffer breeze to make it go round, but it’s back! I love the new, improved version.
Take that, varmits!
I was inspired to make this wreath by a do-it-yourself project that I ran across on pinterest (original link here) and pinned it in my “DIY: wannado’s” board a month or so ago. I immediately knew that I was going to try to make one – not just because I loved the way it looked, but because I have been hoarding corks for 10-15 years (much to monte’s bemusement) just waiting for a project I could use them in. The hot-pad-trivet-made-out-of-corks projects I usually run across just didn’t do it for me.
I love wreaths, and with Thanksgiving and Christmas around the corner, I knew I’d better get started if I wanted to finish it before the holidays. I love how it turned out. Here’s how I did it.
I bought an 18″ diameter straw wreath body (from Michael’s) a box of 1 1/4″ dressmaker pins (longer is better) and some craft glue (from Joanne’s). Then I dug out and dusted off several bags/boxes labeled “corks” from the garage and started sorting. I didn’t keep track of exactly how many I used, but I’m pretty sure it’s on the order of about 400-500 corks. I can’t help but do a little math here…. if i estimate that on average I spent $12 a bottle… that means this wreath cost in the neighborhood of about $5000. (heheheh… sigh) Anyway, as I was sorting, I tossed corks that weren’t 100% solid cork. Many were made up of lots of little pieces of cork molded in the shape of a cork. I also wanted to mix up the red wine (stained) & white wine corks and mix in a champagne cork every now and then. So I picked out bunches of them as I went along.
Stick a pin into each cork – get a good bite but leave as much of the pin hanging out as you can.
Then put a line of glue on the pin.
Then stick the cork into position by pushing the head end of the pin into the straw wreath form. I inserted them all at an angle, where one row laid on top of the last one. Sometimes the pins went into a gap between the straw and didn’t stick well. So try to make sure you poke the pin through some of the straw when you push them in. Between the pins and the glue, the corks were surprisingly stable in the wreath when finished.
I must admit that it was a little daunting getting started, but after the first row or two, it really was easy and went a lot quicker than I expected. Here is a close up of how the layering turned out. Some of the corks had years printed on the end or a unique logo, which added a nice touch to the detail.
I hastily added the ribbon as an afterthought, to dress it up for the holidays. I know the ribbon looks a bit hokey, but I wanted to hang it up on the door to take a picture, so I was in a hurry. But you get the idea. After Christmas I’ll remove the ribbon and hang it on a wall in the house dining room or kitchen.
Start saving those corks!
Sheila365 