Tag: postaday2011

THINK.

Lincoln Center.

I’m in Manhattan for the rest of the week, attending a forum on leadership with colleagues and clients – the THINK Forum.  It’s held at the Lincoln Center, which I’ve never visited all the other times I’ve been in NYC.   I love this vantage point of Lincoln Center, the iconic view that is typically the one shown in most movies.  The sun was going down so the light wasn’t great.   I opted to walk back to the hotel from the Center after the event.  Passed by Central Park and down Broadway.   The UN is in session this week so traffic is terrible.  I think the President is staying at the hotel across the street, given the barricades and block-long string of black SUVs and police cars, and people standing around with little things in their ears.  I guess I’ll just mosey along….

The forum is pretty incredible — focused on talking about the kind of extraordinary leadership and leaders that will be required for the future given the short-term and long-term challenges that business, governments and communities face.   IBM has brought in leaders from industry, heads of state, and various and sundry other intellectual giants to come speak.   This is a shot of His Majesty, King Abdullah of Jordan addressing our group.   The president of Mexico also spoke, CEOs of Boeing, JP Morgan Chase, Sony, international think tank researchers, etc.  Guess it’s time to raise my game.

This was day 1 of 2.  Looking forward to tomorrow.

Ok, I feel better now.


I have business meetings in New York this week, so I flew up today.   I checked in to find that the guest rooms do not (amazingly) have wireless, but only wired ethernet connections.  Hard to believe, but, ok, I can roll with that.   So, i plug in and find that the router in the room isn’t working.  I am a little savvy about this sort of thing, so I called down to the front desk to ask for someone to check the network, an hour later a “technician” shows up to look at the desk and declares that all is well on their end, i must dial a 1-800 number to discuss the problem.

So, long story short, after 3 hours into it, without network connectivity and a rapidly growing inbox that I cannot get to, I ask to change rooms, just for grins.    10 minutes later I am in a room 2 doors down, and plug in and voila (!) all is well.

After schlepping my stuff to the new room, i was in business.  About 30 minutes later a nice man from Room Service knocked on the door with this little tray of goodies from the Front Desk staff to make up for the inconvenience.

I must say THANK YOU to the Westchester Hilton staff, nice touch, and much appreciated 🙂

Survivors.

Last flowers standing.

If you’re keeping track, yesterday was the 85th day of 100+ degree heat in Austin this year.  Today we have cooler temps due to a cold front that has passed through.  Yippee!!!  That means temps dropping down into the 90s.  😐

I wandered out back today surveying the crackly brown landscape.  Somehow, the morning glory vine still has some life left in it.  Since this Spring, it has grown up and around the 7′ obelisk in the garden, and is all brown and seedy, except for this crown of blooms.

House guest.

Not your normal eye.

We are bird sitting Mr. Echo while Tom and Doray are off to California for a week of vacation.  I’ve tried to get a close-up shot of his unusual eye, but it isn’t working out.  This is a cropped version of a longer shot.  You get the idea. Mr. Echo is a red-bellied parrot (with orange eyes).

Never Forget.

Hurst Harbor "marina."

We spent this day, the 10 year anniversary of the bombing of the World Trade Center, together with fellow B-dockers at the marina.  We were all mindful of what day it was, but really enjoyed spending time away from the painful reminders and just enjoyed talking, fishing, floating and trading stories with friends.

The lake is at 632 and change – 3 feet from the low of 2 years ago, which will surely be surpassed.  It’s sad to see the pasture out back that Hurst Cove south has become.  This (poorly stitched together) panorama shows the view off the back of the marina looking towards Lakeway Park.  Across the way you can see Hurst Harbor Marina (on land).  All their boats have been moved across the lake long ago.  Also missing is Johnny Finn’s floating restaurant that has been moved again to the mouth of the cove.

The shot below is Sail & Ski marina on the other side of the marina, looking out towards the main body of the lake.  All the docks have been stacked to make 3 long docks.  Johnny Finn’s is in the distance, right in the mouth of the cove.   On the far right you can see the private docks stacked up on land in the dry finger of the cove.

Hurst Cove @ 632.40'.

Harvest Moon Slip-up.

La caja china.

It’s a full-moon weekend, which means another get together with our sailing friends.  We have taken to doing “slip-ups” lately, instead of raft-ups, because it’s getting a bit unwieldy to raft-up bunches of boats together in the shrinking coves.  So we party on the dock instead of at anchor.  This is the Harvest Moon full-moon weekend, and to celebrate we wanted to do something big.  So, Ramon graciously offered to roast a pig.  So… how do you do that on a dock at a marina?  Well, you use one of these things in the picture above – a caja china.   Robert and Ramon set up on the middle of the newly-extended F, A & B Dock.  The pig is inside the box on a rack, and the coals are above on a tray.

Cerdo asado.

It turned out delicious.  We had a TON of people, as Texas Sailing brought many of their boat owners over from Lakeway Marina who stayed in guest slips overnight.    Tasha would know for sure, but we think there were about 50 people or more there.

A good time was had by all.  iPod wars on Cupholder wrapped up about 3 or 4 AM.  And, oh by the way, Mike, Wally, Robert and David stayed up all night playing dominoes and generally making a racket all through the night on Allegro in her neighboring slip.  Crazy kids!

Orange tulip.

A peek inside.

Fresh flower shot….I can’t resist tulips.

Too close for comfort.

Fire down the road.

As you may be aware, Central Texas is ablaze with wildfires.  The drought has made conditions extreme for fire danger, and the high winds we got (instead of rain) from Tropical Storm Lee over the weekend fanned the flames far and wide.

Today I was working from home and had the windows open, because the “cold front” that blew through over the weekend left the temperatures in the (relatively) pleasant 80-90 degree range.  The winds have been blowing out of the north, so much of the smoke has not blown into Austin, as the fires are mostly east and west of the city.

Around noon I smelled smoke and figured the wind had shifted and we were smelling smoke from the Bastrop fire east of us, or maybe the Spicewood fire west of us.  I went outside and it was snowing fine, white ash.  I walked out front and saw a plume of dark smoke high over the greenbelt/park at the end of our street.  Then I heard the sirens.

They evacuated our street from the park to just one house away from us.  We spent the afternoon watering down the roof and packing the car with stuff that seemed important at the time.

Apparently there were 4 or 5 different fires in the park.  They think these were started by someone intentionally – unimaginable.  There were 3 engines down the street for most of the afternoon.  Two were fighting the fire in the park, and one was standing by to protect homes, if the situation turned.  This is a shot of one of the engines just a few houses away.

Thankfully the latest status is that the fire is contained and the evacuation has been lifted.   Power came back on about an hour ago.  Everyone in the neighborhood is on edge.

I pray that all the current fires are soon contained, and that no new ones are started.

Up a creek with a paddle.

A fun Friday.

Today we hooked the trailer up, packed up my kayak and stopped by the marina to borrow another one from friends on b-dock.  We are headed to the San Marcos river, which we have tubed for many years, but this time are going to paddle.

The San Marcos is a spring-fed river, and even though we are in a severe drought, it continues to flow with crystal clear, cool water.  We put in at City Park here, and first paddled upstream as far as we could go.  Then we paddled down stream to the Lion’s Club take-out point and took our kayaks over the 3 rapids there and went a little farther downstream.

As we headed back we got a workout on a couple sections, and in carrying the kayaks back up the rocks around the 3 rapids.

As usual, I like to look for found objects.  I would have loved to have found my prescription raybans that I lost last summer on the rapids, but I didn’t.  We did however find a couple pairs of flip flops.   I found a matched pair of Corona flip flops, one upstream and one downstream, and Monte has claimed these (you can see the first one that I found in the picture above.  I hadn’t found its mate yet).  I also found a matched pair of little baby flip flops, which we gave to a woman and her baby that were playing in the water when we got back to City Park.

We took lots of pictures.  It’s funny that I’ve never noticed how many fish are in the river.  I guess all the times we have tubed we didn’t really notice because you aren’t looking down into the river when perched on your tube.

Here is a picture of a water bird striking an odd pose that we encountered along the way…

Odd bird.

Virtual Friday!

Ahhhh.

Today is Thursday, but it is the day before a much needed 4 day weekend!  I’m taking tomorrow off, and Monday is Labor Day, and am looking forward to relaxing with my sweetie.

Cheers!

This just in.

Goat gazette.

A couple weeks back I posted a picture of our two new baby goat neighbors down the street.  The owners have taken to putting a note on the fence for passers-by to keep everyone up to date on their progress.  Apparently their names are Bucky & Rusty, and they have been absent from the fence for a week or so.   Now we know why.

I do enjoy living in our odd little neighborhood…. a little bit of the country in the city.

B&W sage leaves.

Savory.

I am splitting my time today between work and spot watering the trees and shrubs (and, ok, a little blogging, too).  As I was watering the herb garden, I noticed the big furry sage leaves.

I decided to snap a few pictures, and decided to see if B&W would make the texture pop, and it did.

We’ll have to stuff a chicken with some of these leaves soon.

Take care of the little ones.

Poor birdies.

Today Hurricane Irene is marching north along the eastern US coast dumping tens of inches of rain.  I wish all those folks well and hope everyone stays safe.  But I sure do wish we had some of that rain here.

Temps are hovering between 105 and 110 again.  All the animals are terribly stressed.  We are keeping bird baths brimming with fresh water every day all over the yard.  Today I saw 3 of these finches camped out on the window sill in the shade.  They have given up trying to get anything out of the hummingbird feeder.  After these guys flew away I put a container of water on the sill.  I hope they come back and find it.

Pride of Barbados (in Austin).

Tropical & orangeThis is a picture of a flower that surrounded the entrance to the restaurant where went for dinner tonight.  The orange color was very vibrant, even though dusk had set in and the light wasn’t great.

The hostess told us that it is a flower called the Pride of Barbados, which is the national flower of Barbados.  Very pretty!