Venus was next to the moon and in clear view tonight. Kind of blurry, but you get the idea:
I had a lovely dinner with girlfriends tonight. My fortune:
Category: inspiration
New dawn.
I woke up this morning extra early – given the time change yesterday. This was the glorious sunrise sky that lay right out side the front door. I was prompted to go out and take a look when i noticed that the light coming in through the windows was making the entire inside of the house glow pink.
And, what is that sparkle on the horizon? Could it be something new coming my way….?
Cheers to the weekend.
Saturday is here. I’m so looking forward to a weekend break.
I ran errands today, made calls home. Didn’t work! Woohoo Saturday!
Oh, yeah, and well done Longhorns. Hook ’em!
November.
I learned about blogher.com’s National Blog Posting Month project, aka NaBloPoMo. The objective: post something on your blog every day in November. Ok. I’m in.
While every month is lovely in its own way, i especially enjoy November. Maybe it’s the onset of cooling weather. Or that it’s full of deferred-for-too-long vacation days for me. Or it is the beginning of the holiday season. Whatever. It just feels…nice.
I’m looking forward to sharing some of my November moments out here.
Room with a view.
I made my way to the bottom of Manhattan for a meeting in the financial district today. The conference room we were in all day had this great view of the Hudson River. The ferry on the right is headed over to Ellis Island. And to the left is Liberty Island, graced by the Statue of Liberty. My dad and my mom’s dad both entered this country through Ellis island, which was the home for NYC immigration processing between 1892 & 1954 (according to Wikipedia). A very special landmark.
Lake bound.
Hit the lake after work with Colleen and Julie. We’re anchoring out tonight.
Saw two of these flying contraptions. One of them flew right by us as we were sailing and circled the mast.
Later, yet another stunning Lake Travis sunset.
Let the baking begin.
Fall means baking! I made a loaf of banana bread this morning. Yumm!
I used a variation on a recipe from Monte’s America’s Test Kitchen cookbook.
Banana Bread
2 cups all purpose flour, sifted
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 very ripe bananas, mashed well
1/4 c plain yogurt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
6 T unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 c pecans, chopped coarse and toasted
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toast pecans on baking sheet in oven while preheating, 5-10 mins.
Combine flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in large bowl.
In separate bowl, mash bananas with hand masher, then add yogurt, eggs, melted butter and vanilla and stir by hand to mix.
Fold banana mixture into dry ingredients with spatula until just combined. Fold in pecans. Turn into greased and floured 9 1/2″ loaf pan and smooth.
Bake at 350 degrees for 55 minutes. Then test for doneness with toothpick. If still too moist inside, put back in for 5 minutes and try again. When done, cool in pan for 5 mins and then turn out onto wire rack.
Home.
Touchdown ABIA.
It’s good to be home. I’m very tired. And, I’m on call this weekend for work, so I won’t be able to venture very far. So while it’s nice to be home to recharge, there’s still lots of things to keep me busy. Monte has dart night at the house tonight, so I’ve slipped away to putter around til i fall asleep.
Sometimes I create playlists on iTunes just based on a word search in the title or the lyrics of the songs in my library. Tonight, I searched for songs with “home” in the title and found many hits. Here’s a sampling, in order of when i first remembered hearing them (sorry ’bout the goofy ads before many of each of these…hopefully you can click through). I have a story to go with each of these, but for now I’ll just share the links. Maybe you’ll enjoy and/or remember them, too. As for me, i love how music is woven into my memories….
– Carole King’s Home Again
– Alice Cooper’s I’m Going Home
– Tim Curry’s I’m Going Home from Rocky Horror Picture Show
– Cecilio & Capono’s Home (and I’m staying this time)
– Bonnie Raitt’s Home
– Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes’ Home
– Phillip Phillips Home
A (more specific) prayer for rain.
I’m very happy to see all the rain that has been sent our way. It’s an answer to countless prayers over the last few years of severe drought in Central Texas. I’m sure the Austin City Limits music festival-goers are bummed about yesterday’s cancellation, but they did have an extra weekend of music to enjoy this year.
My trees and lawn are drinking in this much needed water. It’s truly a gift.
However, the rain this week and in the year past seems to fall where it flows into the creeks and river below the lakes. Onion Creek is raging right now, having received 6-10 inches in the last few days. Barton Creek and Williamson Creek were flooding for the same reason, but all of them dump into the Lower Colorado river below the Highland Lakes. E.g,:
I see that there is more rain in the forecast for this week. So, more thanks in advance for that. But I’m sending a humble prayer for that rain to drop in the Lake Travis watershed. Right over Marble Falls and Burnet would be simply awesome. Or even a bit southwest of that, in Fredericksburg, Johnson City or thereabouts would be fantastic, as all that rain would end up in the Pedernales River, which feeds into Lake Travis.
After all the rain in the past week, Lake Travis is up only 2′. And I do sincerely appreciate every drop that ends up in the lake. But we need to come up more like 50-60′. So, I’m praying for it to dump buckets of rain in the shaded are below. That would be divine. Seriously divine.
I have another prayer for better management of our lakes and water reserves than what the LCRA has provided over the last decade or so, but I’ll leave that for another day. Just please keep the rain coming.
Amen,
Sheila
Vroom vroom.
This weekend Lori & Dave are out of town, and Jake is staying with us. He’s a great kid. I don’t know who is keeping an eye on who. 🙂 We had a fun pizza / game night last night with Doray, Tom, Sue & Marty. It is so nice to spend time with friends.
Jake and I have been racing Mario Karts on the wii quite a bit this weekend, but today we headed to K1 Speed for the real thing. It’s a pretty awesome indoor venue for kart racing. This is not bumper cars, folks, these karts can go over 40 mph. It was pretty fun! That’s Jake in #25 in the shot above. And I couldn’t resist taking a selfie in my cool racing hat…
A fitting treatment.
My father-in-law served in the U.S. Army infantry in Europe in WWII. So, when he died 10 years ago, his funeral included military honors. At the family reunion this summer, Monte received from his sister the burial flag, which was still in the plastic zippered display pouch from the funeral home. We’ve been displaying it on the shelf in the living room, but it deserves a much nicer treatment. So, this week Monte set out to the shop to make a fine custom frame. He used some beautiful black walnut that actually used to belong to his dad. A day or two later, and it is done. Complete with beautiful inset splines to join the corners, and a strip of cedar inside.
After placing the flag in its new display case, we acknowledged the upgrade with a toast of sparkling apple cider. I’m sure Ross would approve of both 🙂
Red sky at night.
We tried a new restaurant tonight. After arriving back at the house, the sky was lovely and pink. Good omen?
A little later the crescent moon popped into view. 
And my fortune tonight:
We shall see…
No pain, no gain.
In preparation for our next trip to the islands, monte has started practicing making Painkillers.
I’m happy to be a guinea pig. Especially on a Monday night.
Keep ’em comin’, big guy.
Mmmm. I love the pineapple-y, nutmeg-y aroma.
It’s been a year?
One year ago today, my cousin Steve died unexpectedly from a complication of a routine back surgery that he had undergone a week prior. We were two months apart in age. In addition to the shock of his loss, it was a stark reminder that you can be here one moment and gone the next. Seize the day, folks. Love to his family and friends on this day.
Sheila365 