Mar 17, 2011

Cheers!

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

We dashed down to our local pub after work tonight to drink Irish beer and eat corned beef and cabbage for dinner.

I didn’t have my camera with me, but monte has mastered his new phone for taking and uploading photos.  So here ’tis!

Mar 16, 2011

Cake for breakfast.

Happy Birthday to my sweetie.   The cake turned out nicely… moist, not too sweet, and a hint of guinness 🙂

It’s always nice to take your birthday off as a vacation day.  But we both worked today.  After work, we went for dinner at Captain’s and Monte got a dozen on the half shell and then we went to the Dart Bowl to bowl a couple games.    Seems like we’re a bit out of practice for real-world bowling since we’ve started wii-bowling.    But we eventually got back in the groove.

Mar 15, 2011

Beer… or cake… or both?

Monte’s birthday is tomorrow so I’m going after two of his favorites at the same time… chocolate cake and guinness 🙂

I found this recipe from Nigella Lawson and am giving it a try tonight.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Update:  It was DELICIOUS!  try it!

Mar 14, 2011

Lily.

This is a close up of one of the lilies that monte brought home the other day.

I’m thinking I’m ready to have a new camera to play with 🙂

Mar 13, 2011

Osteospermum.

Irene and Joseph left in the wee hours this morning for their flight.  It was definitely a shorter drive from our house to the airport than from College Station.

Today is another beautiful day.   The flowers I planted seem to be taking hold.

This is an african daisy – at least I think that’s the common name for this flower.   I’ve planted them before and though they are an annual, they will come back after a mild winter.   Last winter was definitely not mild for us, so these guys are newly planted.

Mar 12, 2011

All-Americans.

This weekend I made my first trip to College Station to watch my first ever track meet.   I’m so glad I did, it was a blast.  Jeremy made the podium in 8th place in the heptathlon – an All-American in the strongest field of heptathletes that have competed together in a long time, maybe ever – according to my informed track parent friends 🙂

Irene and Joseph stayed with us again tonight and we had our own little party to celebrate and catch up.

Mar 11, 2011

They're here!

My morning stroll through the wildflower patch in the way back found 3 bluebonnets have their color.

And many more to come, i hope.

Mar 10, 2011

Grand.

I’m very excited that one of my best friends from high school, Irene, is here for a visit with her husband, Joseph.   They live in Seattle.  Their son Jeremy is competing in the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championship @ Texas A&M this weekend in the heptathlon, for the University of Washington.   They’re staying with us tonight before driving up to College Station tomorrow.  They flew in this evening and we went to dinner at Chez Nous (*love* that place) and walked around downtown afterward.

We buzzed through the landmark Driskill Hotel.  This is a shot of the huge glass ceiling decoration over the main lobby.

Nice.

Mar 9, 2011

Sequel.

It’s funny, really.   I looked out the front window today and saw that all of a sudden the ornamental pear tree out front had burst into bloom.  I looked back through the photos I took last spring, because I recall taking a photo of the entire tree full of white flowers.   It turns out I took that picture last year on the same day as today – March 9th.

Amazing how all this works.

Mar 8, 2011

Happy 1st blogoversary!

Today is the 1 year anniversary of my starting this blog.   To mark the occasion, I made a collage using all 365 of the moments that I’ve posted here.

I can recall taking each one.   🙂

I started this in early March last year, in time to capture the signs of Spring, and into the Summer as things began to warm up and as we spend so much time on the lake… then through the changes in Fall and Winter when we spend more of our time on projects and playing with friends on land.  I’ve come full circle, and am looking forward all the moments from the coming year.

Happy Mardi Gras!   and  HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Lori and to Mary!

Mar 7, 2011

Day #365!!!

Today’s post makes the 365th moment that I have shared with you.  This is a shot of one of the geraniums I planted yesterday that I took today during a break between conference calls.

I’m very pleased that I have stuck with this post-a-photo-per-day-for-a-year project.  There were some days that I found it difficult to see something worth sharing.   But I have to say that most days I looked forward to toting my camera around with me, and was usually pleased to find a moment that was either a photo that I liked or at least made for a nice story to share.

Wow, a year.   365 moments.   It goes by fast.

I look forward to keeping my blog going.  I don’t know that I will be posting something every day, but I am definitely looking forward to posting more moments worth sharing.

A colleague of mine passed away over the weekend after a fight with cancer.  He was only 51.

I can only hope that you all have many more years left on this earth to share with your friends and family.   But since we never know when our time will be up, we have to take the time to enjoy and be thankful for each and every day that we get to spend with them.   I have done that for a year.   And I hope to from here on out…

Mar 6, 2011

Columbine.

Another great weekend.  I put out some more flowers.   These are Columbines, which I think are just beautiful.  They are perennials, so I’m hoping this will be year 1 of many years of blooms.

They were lit up by the quickly setting sun.

 

Mar 5, 2011

In like a lion.

This is the first weekend in March and it’s WINDY!   We took a break from cleaning house and varnishing the boat to take the awesome pirate ship kite that Santa brought me out for its maiden voyage.   It’s about 2 feet high and 3 feet long, made by New Tech Kites, a company here in Austin.

Tomorrow is actually the Zilker Kite Festival, but ironically, the wind is predicted to be in the single digits tomorrow.  So today was our chance!

It turns out the kite is rated for 8-20 mph winds, and it was gusting in the 20s, so it actually ended up being a bit too windy for it.  But we did get her up in the air and flying!   AHOY!

Mar 3, 2011

Troglodyte tech.

Monte and I gravitate towards the dull edge of the technology adoption curve.  We have had the same, old school cell phones for about 8 years now.   They both looked identical and served us well.   Last week AT&T sent a letter to the remaining cavemen that were on the old plans with old phones to tell us that we had to get new phones and a new plan or our old ones would stop working in about a month.

So we have been grudgingly forced up to the next level of bare bones basic phone.  Nope, no data plans or internet access — still just a phone.   Here’s a shot of the new device.   It only took me a few minutes to figure out how to make a phone call 🙂

I did take the opportunity this time to get us each different colored phones.   So we got that going for us…