Sheila365

Tulips of white.

Monte brought home a set of tulips. My favorite, as you probably have learned. These are white and gorgeous.

Fyi, Google says January 17 is National Tulip Day in Holland. Go get you some!

Yet another little luxury.

Monte and I are thankful for many things – very fortunate and blessed.

Annddd, with that being said… we indulged this Christmas in a 12V television & DVD player for the boat. Actually, each of us bought the other a TV and wallmount for the boat, heh heh 😀 That was worth a chuckle on Christmas morning. We picked the best of the two and returned the other. And today we went to the boat again so that Monte could finish up the wiring, and we brought a DVD to try when we fired everything up.

It works GREAT! I’m looking forward to trying it out while at anchor in our favorite cove.

A walk in the woods.

The cold and rain finally let up here in Austin, after a week. So, I set out to explore the new North Walnut Creek trail that was supposed to be recently finished. I was looking forward to a 6+ mile walk on the new trail. The nice, new trailhead at Balcones Park:

The lovely paved sidewalk ended about 100 yards later and the rest of my walk was through muddy, rocky trails. Walnut Creek was flowing pretty good due to recent rain, so I wasn’t always able to cross where the trail crossed. My shoes and feet were wet before too long. I got pretty messy, but it was great!

I was taken aback by the amount of trash near the trail. We’ll have to rally the troops to clean it up. This was one sight – the tire has been there a while…the tree has grown up through it.

And, I guess if you must deface things with spray paint, the least you can do is make it pretty and add a thought provoking statement…

AND While I was out and about, I found 7 geocaches. 🙂

A fun Sunday!

Playing hooky.

It’s COLD in Austin today! And since we are both off work, we decided to make it an adventure. We took the Austin MetroRail train downtown to check out the Austin Boat Show at the convention center.

Commuter rail is really only in its infancy in Austin. It doesn’t go to too many places, but it’s a start. People can and do debate the pros and cons of what Cap Metro has implemented. We have never tried it though, til today. Here are some things I observed:

– no park & ride parking lot at Kramer station. we had to drive around to find a free spot on a street nearby.
– a day pass is $5.50 per person (actually valid for 24 hours), easy to purchase at the kiosk. though one of the 2 machines was out of order at that station.
– trains don’t run into the evening (i.e. past 6:30 pm) on weeknights. but, since today was Friday, trains do run til about midnight.
– the train was nice, on time, and warm.
– the cars have wireless for passengers to use.
– there are bike racks inside the train car.
– there were not many riders – each train appeared to only have 2 cars.
– the ride from Kramer station to downtown station, which is right outside the convention center, took about 25 minutes, with only a handful of stops.
– overall, it was a nice commute. I’d ride it again.

After we got downtown, we were only 2 blocks away from one of my favorite restaurants, Chez Nous. And they had just opened for lunch! So, we had to go in. Delicious, as usual.

The boatshow was nice. Lots of power boats, travel trailers, and our favorite vendor: Texas Sailing. Go check them out! The show runs through this Sunday.

From Zihua with love.

After her graduation last month, Julie spent a week in Zihuatanejo, Mexico with a friend – a well-earned treat after 2 1/2 years of hard work. She brought us back this painted, wooden bowl as a gift. She painted it herself! And, I think it’s beautiful.

She packed up her things and drove back to Washington State this week and is now back in God’s country. She starts her dream job next week and has a limitless future ahead of her. Well done, Julie! We miss you already.

Ever heard of Zihuatanejo? It’s a town on the southwest coast of Mexico. I’ve never been. I only know of it from Julie’s trip. And from the movie The Shawshank Redemption. Great movie! Anyway, at the end of the movie, after Andy escapes from prison, he finds his freedom in this beach town and his buddy, Red, meets him there in the closing scene, after making parole. Great quote from the flick: “Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” Amen.

Treasure trove.

I recently discovered OpenCulture, a website that touts itself as “the best free cultural & educational media on the web.” And i’m a fan!

They have compiled a listing of free audiobooks, movies, massive open online courses (aka MOOCs), and bunch of other interesting tidbits to enlighten and amuse. I’m currently listening to a dramatized reading of Brave New World, narrated by its author, Aldous Huxley back in the 50s. I read this novel in a mind-expanding and life-changing English literature class when I was in highschool. It’s a treat for my brain, now that I have reached such an advanced age. 🙂

OpenCulture also has daily posts that usually are clickworthy, you can add them as a blog (using their url) to follow via your WordPress Reader page or another RSS reader, or like them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.

Check it out!

I ♥ Kohler.

When we remodeled our house 5 years ago, we put in a beautiful Kohler Simplice faucet (model number K-647-VS) at the big kitchen sink.

I love it. A few months ago, though, it started leaking water from under the single hot/cold control handle. There was always a puddle around the faucet. It drove me NUTS.

Google showed me that Kohler has really great documentation on how to fix this on their web pages here and even a short video here. And I eventually dug out and read the owner’s manual/guide that came with it – yes… i keep those things 🙂 I read about the Kohler Faucet lifetime warranty. You can read the fine print here, but Kohler basically says: “if the Faucet should leak or drip during normal use, Kohler Co. will, free of charge, mail to the purchaser the cartridge necessary to put the Faucet in good working condition.” Yes, free. I can’t believe anyone does that anymore.

So, I called Kohler’s customer service line (1-800-4KOHLER) and described the problem to a real and knowledgeable person and they said with all likelihood it was a bad valve. They sent me a replacement valve in the mail for free. It arrived over the weekend, and I installed it. VOILA problem solved!

I just wanted to give a shout out to a company that still provides great customer service!

Read on for a few comments on what was a little more difficult than described in my experience of changing the control valve. Good Luck! My DIY photo:

The documentation and video online are pretty much self-explanatory. There were 2 steps that took a bit more effort than I anticipated.

1) It took a significant amount of effort to get the Hot/Cold water control handle off (after removing the set screw) – more than I was capable of, so I enlisted Monte for that job. It took a while, but it did come off with a sustained, firm, upward pull. The problem was the black, plastic sleeve on the valve was stuck in the handle, creating loads of friction. The new valve comes with a replacement black sleeve, so I had to remove the old one using needle nose pliers after the handle came off.

2) the decorative “bonnet” under the handle was hard to unscrew. But, I used one of those rubber, grabber pads that helps unscrew the lids from jars. And with some perseverence, it did the trick. After those two steps, everything else went as advertised.

The replacement kit came with a teeny capsule of grease, which I spread around the new valve’s o-ring. The video doesn’t mention that.

Yay KOHLER!

First Sunday!

The Texas state history museum offers free admission to all exhibits the first Sunday of every month. Today we headed downtown and met Laura to see 2 new exhibits: Fly Girls of WWII, and the 300+ year old shipwreck of La Belle. Both worth the trip.

Afterwards, we hit happy hour at Clark’s. Half-price off all bottles of wine! Oh and the food is good, too. 🙂

A very nice Sunday.

Ohmigosh, 2015 already!?!

I want to wish you a most happy New Year and all the best to you and yours in 2015! I have been away a while. Partly due to distractions. But also partly due to the fact that I had run out of online storage space for my blog @ wordpress, and I wanted time to think about how and or whether to upgrade the options for my blog.

In the end I decided to simply buy a storage upgrade (to add an additional 10G to the default 3G limit). When my domain options are up for renewal next year, I might consider upgrading to Premium on wordpress, which includes the increased storage, but I bought myself some time.

I think last we crossed paths out here in the blogosphere I was headed home from a long visit in Seattle, back to Austin. Suffice to say I have not been idle.

The day after coming home, we left for a fantastic week in Paris – a trip we took with little pre-planning; celebrating a birthday in a place we both love. And since then: Thanksgiving, family visiting, Julie graduated and left Austin to take the next step in her life’s path (sniffle), Christmas & New Year’s, and we have spent some fun times with friends.

Somewhere in there 2014 slipped away. Today I find myself on the second day of a new year — a few weeks delinquent in blog posts but looking forward instead of behind.

Here are just a few picks to fill in since last I posted:

Bon Anniversaire!

Post-Thanksgiving Day sail:

A day trip through the Hill Country and a hike to the top of Enchanted Rock on a clear December day with my sister & brother-in-law:

Christmas Eve:

And New Year’s Eve:

I can’t wait to see how 2015 unfolds….

Cloudy.

Headed back home.

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, leetle seester!

Caching in the cold.

Fran and I went geocaching today. This cold front brought temps in the 20s overnight. And apparently it stays below freezing in parts of the woods.
This is one of the ponds we encountered, covered in ice.

A great day.

Today Mom and I headed to Seattle Center to see the amazing Chihuly Garden and Glass museum. Fran, Aaron and Colleen joined us. It was an amazingly clear, sunny day. We also went up in the Space Needle to see the 360 degree view. I took too many pictures to share here, but will leave you with a few.