I have this thing about certain words… some of them I can’t seem to remember time and time again. But I remember what letter they begin with. Weird. Makes me think that the brain, or at least my brain, indexes information alphabetically.
Anyway. The name of this flower is one that always escapes me. But I know it begins with a “G.” Google is a nice companion tool for my funky memory, i just searched on “flowers that begin with G.” And there it was in the list with all the other G-flowers… Geranium.
This is one that has weathered the summer, and is putting out some more buds – they’ll be fire-red when they bloom. These are likely the last of the season.
Its amazing to see how quickly Mother Nature responds to a little rain in the midst of this terrible drought. We got an inch or two of rain on Sunday, and today the creeping lantana out back is popping with blooms. I’ve been watering this guy by hand all summer, but it wasn’t as satisfying as a drenching rain, I suppose.
The crepe myrtles are popping into bloom as well. It’s nice to see a little color out there!
FINALLY the rain gods have smiled on us. We got a few minutes of showers yesterday afternoon, but this morning a front came through and dumped about 2 inches at our house, and hopefully a lot more in the Hill Country, bound for Lake Travis.
The shot above captured a splash from a raindrop in the birdbath out back.
The shot below captured a rain drop in free-fall 🙂
Nearly 11 years ago a little blue parakeet adopted us. Petey lived with us 9 long years. We have waited some time before getting another bird but have started looking over the summer.
Over the weekend we found a gentle little boy (we hope) who has some of Petey’s coloring, but is different enough to be his own little bird.
We brought Keeto home tonight. Here’s to the newest member of our flock!
We’re back home. We had a nice time in the Pacific NW, but it’s nice to be home again. We flew in over Lake Travis and got these pics. The lake is at 629.07′ today, according to LCRA. We are lower now than we were in 2009, and only about 15′ more to go to hit the all time low. The shot above is of Hurst Cove and our marina. You can see the docks all stacked up. The marina sent a notice saying they’ll be moving some of the docks out to the middle of the cove. Not much water left in there.
This is a shot of Arkansas Bend. Arky North and South are slowly disappearing.
Arkansas Bend.
Below is a shot of Cow Creek. It’s hard to believe we were up in there for the March birthday raftup.
As you may have figured out, we extended our stay in Seattle a few more days. We are working from here during the day and playing at night. Today is our anniversary, as well. It just so happens that we got engaged while on a trip to Seattle to attend Patrick and Nga’s wedding. Monte popped the question and gave me a ring in a waterfront restaurant here – Elliott’s Oyster House on Pier 56. Nice memories. So…. since we were in town, we just had to go there for dinner tonight to celebrate.
After work we popped over to Seattle on the ferry. The mountain was out, though a bit hazy.
Whenever riding the ferry, I buy a bag of cheetos to feed to the seagulls. Monte had them eating out of his hand.
In Seattle, we walked down the waterfront for a while. At Elliott’s, we had a great table by the window overlooking the Sound and watched the sailboats and ferries go by as the sun set. We sampled as much of the seafood as possible – oysters, crab cakes, scallops, salmon…..the food and wine was delicious.
Afterwards we walked up and down the waterfront on the way back to the ferry. The weather was great. The first shot in this post is of one of the horses on an antique carousel inside of Miner’s Landing on Pier 57.
Picked a bunch of blackberries today. The plants grow like weeds here. They are big and sweet and ready to eat.
When I was a kid my brother and I would often be sent down the street to pick gallons of blackberries at a time – to make pies, jelly and jam. We would come home with full buckets, covered in scratches, with red stained fingers that you couldn’t get clean even with bleach. And that is where I learned to dislike spiders. The bushes are full of incredibly large spiders that love to hide behind the big green leaves, and who also have a tendency of spinning their virtually invisible webs at eye-level across walking paths among the brambles.
This time I wore gloves, and I managed to avoid any close encounters with those gnarly spiders. 🙂
We celebrated mom’s birthday at a luncheon with family and friends. It was lovely.
Ten years ago, i was unable to attend her 70th birthday surprise party due to the US airspace remaining closed after the 9/11 attack. How quickly a decade has slipped away. But, I’m glad we were able to make it here this time to celebrate with everyone.
We are both up in Seattle this weekend to celebrate my mom’s 80th birthday. I flew in last night and we stayed with Patrick and Nga. This morning we went to breakfast in Ballard at the Fisherman’s Terminal. It’s a marina strictly for commercial fishing boats. This is the home of many of the crab boats on the show Deadliest Catch. Below is a shot of the memorial to fisherman lost at sea..
Rest in peace.
After breakfast we drove around to the peninsula to meet up with my family for the rest of the weekend.
Headed back to Austin for a laundry run. It drizzled in Dallas this afternoon. On the approach to AUS I was hoping that was a thundercloud, but it was not.
Today is the last day of Summer 2011. Sad, but hoping cooler and, more importantly, wetter weather lies ahead.
We had another full day today at the THINK Forum. Today’s speakers included the President of the Philippines, President of Costa Rica, CEOs or Chief Scientists from Dupont, Royal Dutch Shell, Dow Chemical, Bharti, ICICI Bank, Mars (chocolate company, not the planet), the head of the World Trade Organization, Charlie Rose the TV guy, Tom Friedman the Foreign Affairs columnist for the New York Times… to name a few.
After the last session I decided to walk, and I took a detour through Central Park. By the time I got close to my hotel they had several blocks completely closed to car and pedestrian traffic. They had 2 large garbage trucks pulled across each of the the intersections to prevent someone from driving a car through the barricades. Apparently, Obama was leaving his hotel, which is right across the street from my hotel. I couldn’t get anywhere near my hotel for another 30 minutes or so. I also learned from our doorman that the President of Iran – Ahmadinejad – is in the hotel cate-corner to mine. Tough neighborhood.
Anyway, I eventually got back to my hotel in time to shower, shampoo and shine and get ready to head to the Rose Hall, the Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center for a special, one time performance in honor of the IBM Centennial. Kind of funny to see all my fellow IBMers dressed in black tie and formal gowns. The performance was commissioned by IBM especially to celebrate this occasion. It was AWESOME. Morgan Freeman was the emcee, and performers included the Julliard Orchestra, singer Jessye Norman, modern dance performers, violinist Joshua Bell, Steve Martin, and Patty LaBelle. Here’s a shot of the troupe on stage after the finale.
IBM Centennial Performance.
The current and last 2 CEOs (and i’m pretty sure the next one) were in the audience, as were the grandkids of TJ Watson. Afterwards, we had dinner at the Opera House. I’m back in the hotel now, and am very tired, but inspired, and a little spoiled. 🙂
I’m in Manhattan for the rest of the week, attending a forum on leadership with colleagues and clients – the THINK Forum. It’s held at the Lincoln Center, which I’ve never visited all the other times I’ve been in NYC. I love this vantage point of Lincoln Center, the iconic view that is typically the one shown in most movies. The sun was going down so the light wasn’t great. I opted to walk back to the hotel from the Center after the event. Passed by Central Park and down Broadway. The UN is in session this week so traffic is terrible. I think the President is staying at the hotel across the street, given the barricades and block-long string of black SUVs and police cars, and people standing around with little things in their ears. I guess I’ll just mosey along….
The forum is pretty incredible — focused on talking about the kind of extraordinary leadership and leaders that will be required for the future given the short-term and long-term challenges that business, governments and communities face. IBM has brought in leaders from industry, heads of state, and various and sundry other intellectual giants to come speak. This is a shot of His Majesty, King Abdullah of Jordan addressing our group. The president of Mexico also spoke, CEOs of Boeing, JP Morgan Chase, Sony, international think tank researchers, etc. Guess it’s time to raise my game.
I have business meetings in New York this week, so I flew up today. I checked in to find that the guest rooms do not (amazingly) have wireless, but only wired ethernet connections. Hard to believe, but, ok, I can roll with that. So, i plug in and find that the router in the room isn’t working. I am a little savvy about this sort of thing, so I called down to the front desk to ask for someone to check the network, an hour later a “technician” shows up to look at the desk and declares that all is well on their end, i must dial a 1-800 number to discuss the problem.
So, long story short, after 3 hours into it, without network connectivity and a rapidly growing inbox that I cannot get to, I ask to change rooms, just for grins. 10 minutes later I am in a room 2 doors down, and plug in and voila (!) all is well.
After schlepping my stuff to the new room, i was in business. About 30 minutes later a nice man from Room Service knocked on the door with this little tray of goodies from the Front Desk staff to make up for the inconvenience.
I must say THANK YOU to the Westchester Hilton staff, nice touch, and much appreciated 🙂
Sheila365 