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.
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.
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.
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.
We went for another sail yesterday. It was a beautiful, mild day. I took this shot as we were leaving our marina’s cove. It’s a giant cross out in the middle of nowhere on Graveyard Point. It’s at least 15′ tall and made out of steel beams that appeared out of the blue one day a year or two ago. No small feat for whoever put it up overnight. The guys at the marina like to refer to it as the “immaculate erection.” heh heh.
Anyway, it’s hard for me to sail past it without thinking of Him. I thought it was appropriate to post this pic today, on Christmas Eve. A reminder of what it’s supposed to be about.
I was up early this morning padding around the house. We usually leave the little white Christmas lights on at night. I have always loved to stare at the glow of Christmas lights at night.
I remember doing that when I was a kid. We always had an artificial tree. The same one that we took with us every time we moved. With the big glass bulb colored lights. You know… the kind that would burn your finger if you touched them after having been lit for an hour or so. It’s amazing more homes didn’t burn down back then.
I remember sitting watching the tree lights that decorated my little trees over the years in my dorm or apartment. Somehow I remember those trees being extra pretty during my “on my own” college years.
This morning as I walked down the hall I stopped to admire this year’s glow. So pretty. I just had to snap a shot, too.
Rumors of the end of the world have been greatly exaggerated. We headed out today with a boatfull of friends, Al, Tina, AJ and Ireni. Lori went out as well with Doray, Laura and Ann. A good time was had by all. AJ took the helm and took us up and down the lake in mighty strong breezes. He’s a natural.
We are blessed with great and fun friends. What a great day spent with them!
‘Tis the season for the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar!! This is the 37th year of the Bazaar. If you go, you can find local artists showing and selling their wares (over 150 artists this year), live music on a stage in the center of the hall, and food/drinks to fortify you as you make the rounds. If you are anywhere near Austin between now and Christmas Eve, check it out.
While I was there tonight, Marcia Ball and Kimmie Rhodes shared the stage from 8-10pm – great music! Here’s the obligatory shot from the floor…
One of the most well-padded packages I’ve ever received arrived today, containing a lovely gift from friends Teri & Jim… a hand-made sailboat ornament. L.O.V.E. I.T.! 🙂
Here’s to friends, family and fun. Embrace them all, every day!
While I was in Seattle a week or so ago, I took a glass fusing class with my sister. We made 5 glass ornaments. I had to leave them there to be fired in the kiln, and then they’d mail them to me. Today they arrived.
Here’s the “after”:
After firing.
And here’s the “before”:
Before firing.
The copper metal hangars and accents oxidized and turned red in the kiln. The way we made them was to use 2 pieces of glass cut approximately the same – one piece of glass serves as a base, and then the decoration is placed by putting pieces of glass and metal on top of the base, with a little glue, if necessary. And then the 2nd piece of glass is put on top, sandwiching the decoration in between. During the firing, all the glass pieces fuse together. The result is a single piece of very smooth glass with the decorations baked inside.
I had a lot of fun in the class. I’d like to try it again.
I felt like playing around a bit, so I created an animated gif to capture the transformation of this year’s Christmas tree from bare to decorated to twinkling.
To make the animated GIF, I used the web-based tool Picasion.com. Note: before I created the gif, I reduced the size of the original images down to the size I wanted (i used the width of my wordpress theme as the target image width). Then I created the gif w/ Picasion.
We went to Laura and Arnie’s Christmas party tonight. It’s become a tradition, and a most fun one at that. Everyone ends up gathered around the piano belting out Christmas songs. Some scenes from the evening:
Sheila365 