Monte went to the blood center the other day to donate. He came home with a(nother) t-shirt, and a bouquet of flowers that they were giving away to donors. It had a bunch of these little green button poms. Cute as a button….
I like how the shot looks like a little burst of sunshine on an otherwise grey day.
I’ve been going in to my office at work this week – a change from the work-from-home mode I’ve been in for the last 18 months or so. In my desk drawer I found a handful of coins from our last trip to the Bahamas – a bareboat sailing charter through the Abacos. A fabulous trip.
I’ve never really looked at the art on the back of the coins before. They capture the nautical life of the islands … fish, sailing, starfish.
So, it’s stuck in the 30’s here all week, and I’m now dreaming of the islands.
I go to come back….
We took friends out for a sail today. Chris was visiting Irene for the weekend, and after a lovely breakfast in Central Austin we headed to the marina. Irene took the helm for most of the sail and did great. The winds were light so we were able to set up the cockpit table with nibblies for the voyage while we were underway.
Lori and Dave came out, too, on Camelot. And we crossed paths with Wally and Kurt on Zen on our way back.
The day was overcast, and a front was on its way, but it was a really nice day on the lake.
Back at the marina we saw a bunch of our slip neighbors. Wally, Kurt, Lori and Dave joined us for a cocktail. Then we packed it up before the front dropped in.
Our resident ducks stopped by to say hello. They’re all grown up now.
My meetings this week have been running from early AM to late PM. It’s tiring. I took a break today at lunch to walk around outside. These geese are only about half of those that were hanging out in the lake on the property. Before I walked up, they were pointing in all different directions. By the time I got up close to take a few shots, they were all lined up, staring at me, giving me…. the goose-eye. 🙂
I’m headed to Raleigh for the week. I couldn’t avoid the always-dreaded connection today through Chicago. But am pleased to see it sunny and clear outside here as I arrived. I guess I’m only delayed when I’m on my way home….?
I’m trying to avoid all the coughing, sneezing, sniffling fellow travelers. (Obligatory play-on-a-memorable-movie-quote: “I see sick people!”) Wish me luck.
Taking refuge in the Admiral’s Club.
We watched the Seahawks win their 1st playoff game today versus the Redskins. Yay!
Next are the Falcons, a week from today. (A girl can hope!)
Keeto is our own little Seahawk. Fierce, isn’t he? 🙂
He’s about 16 months now. Quite the chatty cathy.
Have a great week!
As the temps linger in the 30s in our neck of the woods, my thoughts have turned to the beach. I’ve been looking for the sea glass that I brought home from our Abacos trip a couple of years ago. But, I haven’t been able to find it yet. I’ll keep digging. I have found other treasures collected while beachcombing shorelines along the west coast, the gulf coast, the east coast, and the Caribbean. So pretty. And they each bring back memories.
This is a baby sand dollar, or some urchin relative. Collected from the east coast of Florida — many moons ago.
Sand dollars are one of my favorite beach finds. Very rare (for me). Not only are they hard to find, but once found are also hard to take home intact.
I can’t wait to go beachcombing again…
Today is my first day back to work. (sniffle)
Less macbook. More thinkpad.
Less freetime. More stress.
Less sleep (?). Hope not. I have been sleeping pretty well the last 2 weeks.
Though I don’t write them down, one of my resolutions for this year should really be to work smarter. I already work pretty hard (if I may say so). So if I’m going to enjoy the majority of my waking life that I spend working these days, I must better prioritize, manage time and …. say no from time to time.
Any suggestions?
Today is the last day of my vacation. Tomorrow it’s back to work for me.
My day started with a mimosa and ended with a glass of champagne — with this absolutely gorgeous sunset squeezed in between. I snapped this as we headed to BB Rover’s for a quick dinner.
Monte and I have discovered the Showtime series called The Tudors. We don’t have Showtime, but BBC America is broadcasting past seasons’ episodes via cable. Yesterday and today have been a marathon session of season’s 1 and 2. I found seasons 3 & 4 on Amazon Instant Video, so we can stream them for free at our leisure. 🙂 Speaking of leisure… I can’t wait til Friday!
For a week or two near the end of every year the shop outback becomes Santa’s Workshop. This year, Santa gave me some beautiful, hand-cut wooden beads for stringing, made out of walnut.
Today, the first day of 2013, I pulled out my box of beading supplies and tools and set out to make something with the walnut pieces. I ended up stringing together a bracelet. I like how it turned out.
Thanks Santa!
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!
Today we set out to run a few errands. For New Year’s Eve this year we are attending a party with a murder-mystery-dinner-party theme. We have each been given a part ahead of time and have to come dressed the part. So today our mission was to set out to find appropriate garb and accoutrement. A couple of stops and several hours later we came home with most of what we needed. Stay tuned for more on that in the next few days.
Tonight we stuck close to home, watched reruns of Season 2 of Downton Abbey to prepare for the kickoff of Season 3 in a week or two, and warmed ourselves up with a couple of mugs of hot chocolate. I love these snowman-in-a-snowball mugs that my mom gave us many years ago.
Cheers!
It’s 5 o’clock somewhere! Guess who’s is who’s. 🙂
Sheila365 