Tag: photoblog

Jan 3, 2011

Spring has sprung.

We have been shut out of our garage for the last few days.   I went to Ann’s for my inaugural New Year’s game day on Saturday and when I came home the garage door could not be opened.  It’s a good thing all the cars were out of the garage at the time, or they would have been trapped there until we got it fixed today.

Turns out when your garage door torsion spring looks something like this picture, you need to get it replaced.   Monte toyed with the idea of fixing it himself.  But when the first hits on google for “Do-It-Yourself broken garage door torsion spring” brought up things like:  risk of death, maiming, danger, danger, danger, I looked for a local company to come fix us up.

Les from Cedar Park Overhead Doors came to the rescue today, and we were all set in under an hour.

I’m enjoying this first Monday of the new year… good thing it’s a vacation day!

Tomorrow…back to the grindstone.

Jan 2, 2011

Zantedeschia

Doray and Tom brought a beautiful Calla Lily Friday night.   I wasn’t able to take a shot that does it justice.  It’s lovely.

Today is Sunday.   Monte went golfing.  I ran a few errands to finish some projects before the end of vacation.

We actually have tomorrow off as well … a bit of a bonus vacation day to enjoy.

We just finished watching the Seahawks win their last regular season game to get into the playoffs — by a hair.   Yay!

Do I dare to hope?

Jan 1, 2011

Wooo hooooo!

You gotta love a good party.  🙂   We did our part to welcome in 2011 – calling it quits around 3 AM.   I think we’ll just leave this til tomorrow.

Happy New Year!!

Dec 31, 2010

Last hurrah.

We plan to ring in the New Year with friends tonight.  This is a pre-party shot.

Looking back on 2010… it has been a good year.   This photo-a-day project has given me a reason to take time out each day to document a moment to share.  Maybe most importantly, just to take time out to see things.  And to focus on the good, rather than the bad.

I look forward to the new year and wish you a healthy, happy 2011!!!

Dec 30, 2010

Two of many.

I raked and bagged many, many leaves this week.  There are many more yet to fall.

I used a sepia tint and some fuzzy/glowy treatment with Picassa.   I like how it turned out.

Dec 29, 2010

Mario Karts mania.

Santa brought me a new Mario Karts wii game.  I’ve been tearin’ it up!  🙂

Got this lovely wii-snapshot in my wii-inbox for reaching a new level.   That’s my wii-head on Luigi’s body — my favorite karts avatar.

Wanna race?

Dec 28, 2010

Reindeer and moose and bear, oh my.

Christmas decorations — they won’t be out for much longer, so I may as well enjoy them.

Note to self:  taking a photo in dim light without a flash turn out very grainy.  🙂

Dec 27, 2010

I LOVE vacation!

We went for a bikeride this afternoon.  It was a sunny, crisp day.

We took a ride through nearby Yett Creek park and decided to go geocaching, since we had the GPS with us.  We found three caches (here’s a pic if you want to check them out) for which we had preloaded coordinates ahead of time.   I use the website geocaching.com to look up coordinates, and log the ones we find.

What a fun afternoon!

Dec 26, 2010

On the 2nd day of Christmas....

…my true love gave to me… a bowl of delicious risotto!

🙂

Dec 25, 2010

Bells will be ringing.

Merry Christmas!!!

This song has been going through my head so I thought I’d share it with you…The Eagles cover of Charles Brown’s Please Come Home for Christmas…no video on this youtube link, just audio.

Dec 24, 2010

Segway segue.

It’s Christmas Eve!!  A bunch of us went downtown to take a Segway tour of Austin with SegCity.   I’ve been wanting to do this for a while.   Friends had relatives visiting so it was a fun opportunity to take one for a ride.

This is a shot of the 10 of us buzzing along south of Town Lake with some of the new skyline as a backdrop:  Laura, Denyse, Chris, Irene, Lori, Dave, Tricia, Dolia, Jake and our fearless tour guide in the lead.

It was fun.  Did you know SegCity is not just a Segway tour outfit, but a Segway dealer?!  I think I must have one of my own.  🙂

Dec 23, 2010

Pizza to go.

We made pizzas with Dan and Lynn at their house tonight.  We brought the doughs, which Monte made ahead of time.   Here is his most excellent recipe:

Pizza Dough

This thin and crispy pizza dough is best baked in a hot oven directly on a pizza stone. Use a pizza peel to move the pizza on and off the stone.  This recipe makes four pizzas about 12 inches in diameter.  Use a Kitchen-Aid mixer.

1 1/2 c. warm water
3 t. dry active yeast
3 T. sugar
2 T. olive oil
4 cup bread flour
1 T. kosher salt

Bring water to 110 degrees F. Pour half into warm mixing bowl.  Add sugar and yeast, stir with a spoon.  Wait for the yeast to proof, about 10 minutes.

Add the rest of the water, oil, salt, and mix.  Install the dough hook and add flour in increments.  Use a high speed while the mixture is soupy.  As the dough comes together, set speed on 2 and run for 20 minutes.  Adjust flour for dough that is moist but not sticky.

Divide the dough into four.  Oil doughs and bowl lightly and let rest for an hour.

Roll then stretch pizza dough to size.  Dust peel with corn meal and flour.  Place dough on peel and add toppings.  Slide pizza off peel directly onto stone.  Bake 5-7 minutes in hot 450+ oven.

 

Dec 22, 2010

Pistache.

This is the 5th winter we’ve lived in this house.  The first year the pistache out back turned a phenomenal shade of yellow before all the leaves fell.   We haven’t been treated to that again until this year.  I guess the drought/rain, heat/cold balance has to be just so.

Many of the leaves fell before turning yellow this year.  But this shot gives an idea of how pretty it is.

Dec 21, 2010

Eclipse.

It’s nice to be home again.

We woke up in the wee hours this AM to watch the lunar eclipse.  It was very cloudy and breezy last night so the cloud cover was whizzing by with some brief openings in which you could get a glimpse of the moon.

This is a shot of it as the moon was passing out of the shadow of the Earth.

Today at 5:38 PM local time is the Winter Solstice  — first day of Winter.

Oddly enough the forecast is for temps in the 80’s today.  Pretty bizarre.