Tag: Austin

Baby, it’s cold outside!

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Saturday evening, right around 7pm, the predicted “artic blast” arrived with 30 mph winds in our part of Austin, quickly dropping temperatures from the upper 70’s (Farenheit) during the afternoon to an overnight low in the low 20’s in just a few hours.   Sunday stayed right at freezing at our place all day, and then temperatures last night again hit the low 20s.  Tonight will probably freeze again.   Things will warm up a bit before Christmas Day.  Then we can put away our woolies until the next cold front comes through.

A few years back we had an outside spigot and pipe freeze, flooding one of our back rooms and making a cold mess when the ice thawed.   This year, Monte designed a wooden box to house a 25w incandescent light bulb for each of our exterior spigots to keep them warm and avert disaster this time around.   He cut out the pieces.  I assembled them, while he wired a light socket and lamp cord for each of them.  They worked great!  We can put them away later this week, until the next deep freeze heads our way.

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Free Thursday at the Blanton.

The Blanton Museum downtown currently has an Andy Warhol exhibit, running through January 29th.   It is called “Warhol by the Book.”   It contains his artwork associated with bookcovers, album covers, playbills, books that he published, and other of his works associated with authors.  I enjoy Andy Warhol’s art, and saw things in this exhibit I’d not seen before.

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Hands-on album cover exhibit.  You can handle the albums and even play the LPs.

There was another visiting exhibit by Xu Bing called “Book from the Sky,” which runs through January 22nd.  I knew nothing about this artist nor the work, but thought it was interesting.  Over 4 years, Xu Bing hand carved thousands of wood blocks with non-sensical chinese characters/words of his own design, and then crafted traditional-format chinese books and scrolls made up with his hand-crafted characters.  So, if you know Chinese, it looks like gibberish.  If you don’t know Chinese, it looks like, well, Chinese.  🙂  I guess it’s supposed to get you thinking about the power of words, and also the beauty of Chinese calligraphy.  It was a beautiful exhibit, nonetheless.

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Their permanent exhibits are currently not open, as the museum is doing construction on the 2nd floor.  But those will reopen mid-February.

I enjoyed learning something new.  After we fed our minds, we had lunch downtown.   A nice day.

Must be that time of year.

We’ve had ample early warning that Christmas is coming.   I went into a Home Depot store at the end of September and they were already filling the entire store with Christmas decorations.  Halloween and Thanksgiving have come and gone.  So, it must be close.

We went out to lunch today, and this little paratrooper greeted me on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, having landed there recently.  I had to take a second look, but it’s Frosty!  A little shaken up, but I think he’ll be alright.  Must be one of Santa’s early reconnaissance forces.

Time to start decking the halls!!!

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Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve.

Today I went birding with my friend, Doray, to Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve.   I’m a novice.  I was able to get a lot of amazing photos of tree branches.  🙂   If I ever get an amazing photo of a bird, I may share here.  But for now, I won’t bore you with it.   We did see several kinds of birdies, so I’m calling it a success.

Here are two non-bird shots from the morning:

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Twelve hours after full.

Happy Super Beaver Moon!

One shot as the moon was just rising over the tree tops in my yard:OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

and then one later, higher, and brighter:OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Twelve hours before full.

My best shot of the supermoon rising last night.  Not as good as I would have liked.   I played with ISO, aperture and shutter speed.  Forgot to take off polarizing filter (doh).

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Birdies above. 

At home I am feeling the absence of the little birdies and squirrels lately.  They started making themselves scarce about the same time a hawk was spotted swooping around the trees in our yard.   Hopefully this won’t last long. 

In the mean time, I was thrilled to see a flock of 20 or more Monk Parakeets flying around the Lamar & 51st street area as we headed home from dinner tonight.  We stalked them for a while but didn’t get a great shot. 

This is a picture of them near one of their nests.   I count 16 or so in this shot.  Kind of reminds me of a musical scale with the birds as the notes. 

Towering.

I booked a couple of tickets to tour the University of Texas Tower tonight.  It has been, thankfully, a rainy weekend, so I didn’t get the pre-sunset view that I was hoping for, but I enjoyed the tour and the 360 degree views of the city.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

A panoramic view from the observation deck, located below the clockface, looking south.IMG_0975

Not a sculpture.

I took a field trip today to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden Museum, down by Zilker Park.  Admission is free this summer, through the end of August, thanks to donations from Amplify Austin.   You may want to check it out as well.  Hours are Tue-Fri 10am-4pm, and Sat & Sun noon-4pm.

I’ve been there before, but it has been over 15 years.  It was a lovely morning, and I headed out before it got too hot.   Charles Umlauf was born in 1910, died in 1994, and was a prolific sculptor.  His first commissioned work was at age 12!   The sculpture garden lies on land between his former home and Barton Springs, and displays 50+ of his works scattered throughout lovely, wooded grounds.

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My favorite:

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Spirit of Flight, 1959

Ok, so, now for the best part… as I was walking through the grounds I noticed a large dark shape sitting on a branch of a tree right over the trail I just walked on.  I realized it was a bird.  A big one.  It was just sitting there, watching me, as I doubled back to try to get a picture.   It was an unexpected sight, and I love the shot.  After I got home I looked online to identify the bird… I believe it to be a barred owl.

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Out on the town.

Last night we celebrated Laura’s birthday by going on a wine bar crawl downtown.  We had picked out 6 or so places ahead of time to stop in at for appies and drinks during the night.  We made it to 5 of them!  In crawl-order:  Prelog’s, Irene’s, True Food Kitchen, La Condesa & The Secret Bar at the W Hotel.  A good time was had by all.

I especially liked this overhead light fixture at La Condesa:

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Seen on a building along one leg of the crawl…. i agree 🙂IMG_0559 (1)

Miles and miles of Texas.

A friend of mine recently sold her house and moved into a condo in downtown Austin.  Her view is amazing. 


Eyes of Texas.  

I was on campus tonight to join an old college roommate and her family watch one of her daughters in a dance competition.   And her team won!  

I caught a quick shot of the UT Tower.  It is lit up in orange tonight; for Honors Day.  Hook ’em!

   
By the way, if you ever want to know what the occasion is for a lit up tower, checkout this link.  And a background on the university tradition of lighting the tower here.  

Must be March.

The bluebonnets are beginning to pop in our back yard, and all over the hillcountry.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Howdy, neighbors!

We have many deer that roam our neighborhood, being located close to a number of greenbelts.  We enjoy them.  Like most of our neighbors, we restrict the tasty and ornamental flowers to our fenced backyard, and have learned to plant the more pungent deer-resistant greens in the front yard.

This week I noticed two deer have taken up residence in our neighbor’s large fenced backyard.   It’s unlikely that they cannot get out of the yard, so I assume they are just very content to stay put.   They are not overly concerned with us tramping around our back yard.    I took this picture using my telephoto from about 150 feet away.

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