Tag: photoblog

Memory lane

Conjuring pigmeat.

We are on VACATION!!!  We flew into Cincinnati airport (which is, ironically, in Kentucky) this afternoon.  Monte lived here for 2 years in 1977-78.  Since we had some time to burn this afternoon, we drove up to Cincinnati to take a tour of some of his old haunts.

We drove down by the waterfront and saw the new football and baseball stadiums.  We stopped by a bar called Arnold’s.  Back in the day, monte lived a few blocks from there, and in the evenings would pop in.

This was the first bar he ever played darts in (with his friend Caleb).  It is also where he met a legendary musician named Pigmeat Jarrett.  Pigmeat was originally from the Queen City, and had spent time playing piano on riverboats along the Ohio River, and woud also play soundtrack for many silent movies.  When he was in his golden years he would sit at the piano at Arnold’s and play into the wee hours.  He would welcome others up on stage to play with him.   It was in several of those sessions that monte joined in on saxophone and, i understand, a good time was had by all.

Pigmeat passed away at a ripe old age in 1995, but his picture still hangs on the wall in Arnold’s.

This is a shot from this afternoon of monte tinkling the keys on the same piano that Pigmeat played in his stints at Arnold’s.

I’m so ready

Get it?

o·ver·whelmed    /ˌōvərˈ(h)welmd/      

past participle of o·ver·whelm, verb

1. Bury or drown beneath a huge mass
2. Defeat completely
3. Give too much of a thing to (someone); inundate
4. Have a strong emotional effect on
5. Be too strong for; overpower

Today is the last work day before taking several days off for a well earned vacation.  A vacation we’ve had on the calendar for over a year.  No matter how well I plan, or how hard I try, there’s no way to painlessly go on vacation, much less come back from vacation, where work is concerned.

This week has been crazy.   But come hell or high water (yes, those are my mother’s words coming out of my mouth) I will set my “out of office” notice on my mail server tonight, shake it off, and happily trudge forward into several days spent with family.   I’m so looking forward to it!  🙂

 

Basil Claus

Basil to go.

Our garden is taking a beating in this heat and drought.  Monte has already pulled up the tomato plants.  They stop putting out flowers.  But we did harvest some pretty red tomatoes off of them this year.  The basil is getting tired, too.   It dries up during the day, and in the evening it gets watered and pops back to life.

Our sprinkler system is shot, so we have been doing the manual watering thing this spring and summer – lots of hose schlepping.  We know we will be out of town for a few days this summer.  So instead of just letting the plants die, Monte is trying to use up as much as we can.   We’ll plant more when we will be here to water them well.

So, tonight Monte cut some of the nicer sprigs, put them in bottles of water and walked them around the neighborhood to give to several of our neighbors.  Hopefully they will use and enjoy it.   For the rest, a marathon pesto session is in order.   You can freeze it, if you hold off putting the cheese in.   Maybe put some in an ice cube tray or two for future use in small amounts.

Nature’s palette or grayscale?

Nature's palette.

Yesterday I went over to Laura’s for lunch around the pool with Lori and Ann.  As usual,  she had a beautiful bouquet of flowers on the counter.  I love the colors of these lilies.  The shot above is the original.  Below is the same shot in black & white, after messing a bit with the color levels and brightness/contrast in Gimp.  I was trying to create something for this week’s Technique challenge over at the Photoblog Challenges website (check it out, you’ll find lots of weekly and monthly challenges – fun for photographers of all skill levels out here in the blogosphere).

Grayscale palette.

Probably too dark.   I was hoping the stamen would still be crisp.  Waddyathink?

We are the people your parents warned you about.

AK Bend at 646'.

Woooo-weee what a party!  Well, we will NOT be doing that every weekend!

After the beer can race yesterday everyone jumped in the water and stayed there for quite a while – me, monte, joe, kurt, wally, lori, dave, marty, sue, wiz, david (new guy on b-dock w/ Misguided), robert, and his friends who own Hakuna Matata on a-dock).  After last weekend’s very wake-y raftup spot in Cypress Creek, this weekend we’ve planned to have a party on B-dock and just sleep on our boats.

Doray, Tom and Judy joined us after the race and stayed til after sunset.   Teri and Jim showed up around 11pm.   We brought a blender, and lots of ice and margarita and pina colada fixins.   Staying in the slip has its advantages.   What a fun time.  Dave left about 9 or so, when his teenage son called my cellphone looking for his parents… heh, heh (isn’t that supposed to be the other way around?! 🙂 )

We pulled out the coleman stove and made a bazillion quesadillas.  Sue brought her legendary bean dip.  We played iPod wars into the wee hours.  There is a digital recording floating around somewhere of what may perhaps be the worst rendition of the happy birthday song ever.  (Happy birthday Mark!)   The security guard even stopped by about 2AM, wasn’t that nice of him?   I think it was about 4AM when everyone headed back to their boats for the night.

I’m so glad we started working on that first wooden boat 13 years ago or so.  We could never have known at the time that it would lead to us learning to sail, making a bigger sailboat, getting a slip at Yacht Harbor marina, landing on B-Dock, and meeting such fantastic people that are so easy to have fun with.

We packed up early this morning and got home about 10AM.   On the way home we took a short detour up to Vintage Villas to see if I could get a shot of the lake from up there.   This is a shot looking down on Arkansas Bend.  In the distance you can see Hurst Cove, where our marina is.

Check out the clouds.

Beer Can Regatta

To the victor goes the spoils.

Today we held the first Beer Can Regatta of the year, and had a great turnout – Spike, Voodoo, Dancer, Prelude, Camelot and Caribbean Hug. Monte and I each jumped on one of the Catalina 30’s. Robert finished first and took home a bottle of Buckeye Vodka. So smoooooth!  After the race a party ensued.  More on that later.

Frugality is the mother of invention.

Awesome.

We had a fantastic shower put in when we remodeled the house 2 years ago.   We love it.  It has natural tumbled travertine stone on the outside.  But on the inside, I picked a matching ceramic tile.  I did this as a last minute change, on the advice of a friend, because she’s had both and said the ceramic tile would be so much easier to maintain  than the travertine on the inside where the surfaces would be wet.

I am SOOO glad I did that.  But I have to say, it’s no small task to keep the grout clean.  I’ve fallen in love with bleach gel pens… the gel sticks to the surfaces and every now and then I just put that in the grout for a little while and scrub and rinse it away.

However, one bleach pen doesn’t go very far in this shower, holding only a couple of ounces of bleach gel.  So…. I decided to try make my own.    Here’s what I ended up with.  I tried this in a small batch, and it seemed to work ok.  I’ve heard you want to use this infrequently, though, it can be tough on the grout.

Homemade Bleach Paste

– 1 part bleach
– 5 parts baking soda
– 2 parts water

Happy birthday!

Mid-week merriment.

Tonight was a good night. We celebrated Laura’s birthday by going out for a girlfriends dinner @ Uchiko.  The food was fantastic.  Edamame, sushi, sashimi,  boquerones, vino … everything was delicious.

I’ll leave you with this:  “A True Friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.”

Peace out  🙂

Snocones, inspiration and a video

Sno-beach!

I had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon which took me downtown.  Since I was in the neighborhood, I just had to stop by the Sno-Beach snocone stand.  If you’ve never had one,  you must.  It will change your life.  If you don’t live in Austin, fly or drive down here as soon as you can and get one.  They make the absolutely, hands-down, indubitably BEST snocones on the planet.  If any of you are skeptical, I’d even put money on it.    And I NEVER make a bet unless I’m sure I’m right (even when i’m wrong)  😀

Even though there were about 30 people in front of me when I got there, and when I left I was in the middle of rush hour traffic on Mopac, it was worth it.

I’d like to work on ways to transform my blog into something more interesting for other people to follow.   Up til now I’ve mostly been doing this for my own enjoyment.  The Daily Post is hosting a Post-a-Day-2011 and Post-a-Week-2011 challenge, an online community really, for bloggers to share their posts and inspire eachother.  It started at the beginning of the year, but I’m joining mid-way (or in work-speak, at the end of 2Q 🙂 ).  I recently completed my own 365-project (a year of posting one photo taken of a moment from each day) but I have been and will continue to post here.  So, in search of inspiration, today I signed up for the once a week version, check it out:

Oh, wait, one more thing!  Here is a link to a video that my friend Teri took of us on Cupholder last weekend as we were all headed up to Cypress Creek Cove for the raftup.   (we’re the little boat in the distance that Teri and Jim are catching up with quickly).  It was WINDY… and we had 2 reefs in, so only a tiny bit of sail up, but we were MOVIN’!  It’s good to be back…

Jun 21, 2011

Rain!

Finally, finally, finally – we have some much needed rain in the forecast.  The front arrived right before midnight.  Yay!

Today is the Summer Solstice of 2011 – Summer arrived at 12:16 pm local time.   Now it ought to REALLY get hot (!)

Google sez the word solstice comes from the Latin words for “sun” and “to stop,” due to the fact that the Sun appears to stop in the sky.  On the solstice the sun reaches its highest point in the sky and stays above the horizon for the longest amount of time all year (14h 06m 08s for us in Austin).  Shorter days are ahead.  However, the earliest sunrise and latest sunset do not coincide with the summer solstice.  The earliest sunrise actually occurred on June 14 in Austin, while the latest sunset is not due until June 27.

Now you know.

Jun 20, 2011

The last sunset of Spring.

When IBM employees reach their 25 year service anniversary they enter the Quarter Century Club (QCC).  One of the perks is that IBM will foot the bill for a dinner with 10 or so of your closest colleagues.  Many of the people I work with are in the QCC zone.  Boy, I must be getting old  🙂

One of my colleagues, Frank, from Raleigh had a QCC dinner tonight in Austin.  I’ve worked with most of the folks there for over 10-20 years, and with Frank for over 15 years.  IBM also has a tradition of compiling a book of letters from colleagues that is presented to the person.  Each time I write one of those letters it’s always a nice trip down memory lane.

I had a good time.  Lots of strories were told, and lots of laughs.  Whenever these get togethers break up people always say …. let’s do this again soon.  But time flies.

Oh, that reminds me… I said I would host the next happy hour the last time a bunch of the old Boca bunch got together.  I better get on it….

Jun 19, 2011

I’ve been in a bit of a funk the last few days.  I’ve taken no photos.  It’s not that we haven’t been busy, or that I haven’t had my camera with me.

Maybe it’s the incredible heat that has been with us for the last month or so (as of June 18 we’ve had 14 100+ degree days in Austin!).  And it’s still spring!  We are back on the lake, though, thank goodness.

Maybe it’s the work thing dragging me down… there’s sooo much to juggle, struggling with how to make progress by  the end of each day.

Maybe it’s all the things on my todo-list in my head that aren’t getting done.  We have so few commitments outside of ourselves and work, compared to other families.  But why is it I can’t seem to get all the stuff done that I want done?

Maybe it’s that my mind has been on my mom.  But the good news is that she is now back at home (her home), with drains/staples from the surgery removed.  And she has not needed a transfusion since the day before the surgery, which was about 6 weeks ago.  Which is amazing and fantastic and the best that we could have expected.

Well, for whatever reason, I don’t have any moments captured to post here from the last few days.   So I thought I’d post something to let you know I’m still here.  And even though I don’t have photos to post, I can post an update of what we’ve been up to.

On Friday, Monte put the sail on, which meant he had to lace the sail onto the new mast hoops  (that would have been a great picture).  He took Cupholder out for a sail in strong winds and she did great.

On Saturday, we headed out for the June Full Moon Raftup, in Cypress Creek Cove – Cupholder, Marty & Sue on Caribbean Hug, Robert & Robert on Voodoo, Jim & Teri on Island Time, and Kurt, Wally, Kevin on Dancer.   We got all settled in by about 7pm or so.  But the motor boats and their wakeboarders were buzzing around until after sunset.  So it was pretty churned up for a while.  We were able to finally cook dinner at about 9 or 10, when the wake died down.  We celebrated Teri’s birthday eve with a cake, Buckeye vodka, and iPod wars.  (That would have been a great picture)  A good time was had by all 🙂

On Sunday, the wakeboarders returned before 7AM, so we decided to head back very early.  We had a great sail in strong winds back to the marina, and spent the rest of the afternoon hanging on B-dock and floating.   Joe showed up.  Wiz was on Allegro.  We helped Lori rig her new main sheet block.  (That would have been a great picture)  Seems like all the other boats made it back from the raftup by 2 or so.  Monte and I were very tired when we got back home and didn’t get much of anything done so we gave in to the sleepiness and turned in.

Here’s to Monday and the start of a new week.  Let’s see if the funk lifts…

Jun 16, 2011

Happy Birthday IBM.

Today IBM celebrated its 100 year birthday.  And I’ve been there for 20 of them (!).  All of the IBM sites held centennial celebrations.  At the Austin town hall meeting we were treated to a live performance of the original IBM rally song “Ever Onward”  – from the days when companies had rally songs 🙂

Monte and 4 other IBMers performed.  Nice job guys.

After work we headed out to the lake to step the mast (yay!).   Hard to believe we took the rig down just about 8 months ago.  Wow.   We had lots of great help from Marty, Joe, Kurt, Robert and Wiz.   We backed Dancer out of its slip and used the halyards from Prelude and Allegro to raise the mast up into the air over Kurt’s slip.  Then we moved Cupholder under the mast and lowered it into place.  It was over in no time!  I do love being on B-dock, we can do anything we set our minds to 🙂     Here is a shot of the mast being hoisted:

Mast raising.

Next, bending on the sail and then going for a SAIL!

Jun 15, 2011

Ready to rig.

The masts and spars have gotten their last coat of varnish.  Tonight, with the help of our friend, Marty, we rigged the mast and spars with the hoops, hardware, boom, gaff and flag halyards, forestay, and topping lift.  She’s ready to step!

Tomorrow we will head to the lake after work to step the mast.   We’re going to do it old school, using the halyards from 2 boats next to Cupholder to raise and then lower the mast into place.