Sadly, today marked the 70th day of 100+ degree temperatures this year in Austin. That breaks the old record of 69 days that stood since 1925. We came close to breaking it 2 years ago.
The current forecast shows another 7-10 days or so of similar weather ahead, so stay tuned.
I really hope we don’t have to experience this again in our lifetimes. Whooo-wee!
The other night I had a hankering for chicken satay, so I looked up a recipe for the marinade and several hours later we had a tasty dinner. We ate them so fast that I forgot to take a photo.
So, I made them again tonight (making sure got get a photo this time) and they were even better. The peanut sauce is a *must have* to dip them in. You can make your own peanut sauce, or buy some… we had some on hand, so we didn’t have to make it this time. We have a little hibachi charcoal grill out back which is just perfect for cooking these.
Here’s the recipe, in case you want to try it as well:
Chicken Satay
Serves 2. Marinate 4-24 hours. Grill 5-6 minutes. Medium heat on grill.
1 lb. chicken breast tenderloins, or breasts that are boned, skinned & sliced into long strips
Peanut oil
Place chicken pieces in dish. Combine marinade ingredients and rub into meat. Cover and refrigerate 4 to 24 hours. If your skewers are combustible, don’t forget to soak them in water ahead of time! Thread meat onto skewers. Brush meat with peanut oil just before cooking. Grill 2-3 minutes on each side. Serve immediately with peanut sauce.
Monte brought home a bouquet of small roses with the groceries the other night. This is a shot of one of the blooms up close. Very pretty 🙂
We stopped by our local pub, BB Rovers, to grab dinner and a beer or two this evening. This is a shot of their ceiling ducks above our table.
We have goats that live down the street. They are a frequent stop on most neighbors’ morning/evening walks through the neighborhood, and they love to walk up to the fence to be fed whatever snacks the visitors bring them. One of the goats died recently, leaving the remaining old goat, Otto, by himself. He seemed very lonely. So we were happy to see these two new baby goats in the pen with him when we drove by tonight.
About 10 days ago I was asked to jump in on handling a client situation which has pretty much consumed my time 24/7 since then. Thankfully things are wrapping up so I can come out to play this weekend!
We are having a “slip-up” this weekend – that’s a term invented by B-dock to describe our overnight dock parties… kinda like a raft-up, but we don’t ever leave the slip! The lake is pretty low, which makes anchoring lots of boats in the shrinking coves difficult. And there is *no* wind expected for tonight, so it will make for a hot night. Oh, and this is a full-moon slip-up, the Sturgeon Moon, so there will be no viewing of the Perseid meteor shower that’s also supposed to happen tonight.
Ace’s birthday was earlier this month, and we missed it, so we brought him a toy gun that blows bubbles and lights up. This is a shot of it in action at night – you can’t see the bubbles but the light looks kinda cool, eh?
This picture reminds me of the song Lazer Beam by the Super Furry Animals. That youtube link isn’t the version that I like the best, but it will do. The recording I like is the one done in KUT Studios a couple years ago and featured as their song of the day, but the link on their archive page is broken, sadly.
It’s still hot and dry.
I spent time yesterday watering the trees out front. This evening after work I put some water on my nearly lost flower bed and the lawn out back.
I was surprised to see that one of my potted plants was hanging in there. Little pink blossoms thriving in spite of the heat and the drought.
Me too.
I’ve been very busy at work, working round the clock for the last 5 days or so on determining root cause of a critical outage at a client location that happened last week. I haven’t been able to come out to play, and was missing in action at the lake again this weekend.
Yesterday afternoon the doorbell rang and the nice man at the door was delivering warm cookies with cold milk! While I certainly didn’t need the calories, the thoughfulness certainly lifted my spirits. Thanks to Sue for providing the lift. 🙂
Hope to wrap this up soon.
P.S. a shout out to Tiff’s Treat’s … yummy!
As I walk out back, I can usually find lots of bird feathers on the ground. Sometimes a pile of them, marking the spot of a scuffle, sometimes just a single feather. The birds out back must really have to be on their toes at all times.
This is one of the blue jay feathers I found. Love the iridescent blue color.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had flowers in the house. Or in the yard, for that matter. We usually have steady stream of zinnias from our patch out back that bloom through the summer. But not this year. The heat this summer seems relentless and is sucking the life out of everything, including me. I have been taking photos from time to time during the week, but for whatever reasons, haven’t felt compelled to post anything here in a while.
It’s so cliche to complain about the heat, but I’m going to. The weathermen tell me tonight that we’ve just wrapped up the hottest July on record in Austin since they started keeping records in 1854. Of the 31 days in July, only 2 were under 100 degrees – but just barely, at 99. The first day of August is another record setter, and the hottest day this year, at 107. I had to stop, rewind and replay the DVR while watching the news tonight when I heard this one… current temp during the 10pm local newscast was 95 degrees. Sheesh.
This was a bad year for our sprinkler system to be out of commission. Hand-watering is such a pain – and takes more time out of an already busy day. The lawn is shot and we are now focused on keeping the stressed out trees alive.
Well, that brings me back to the fresh flowers. I saw these hydrangeas yesterday at HEB and they seemed so pretty and soft and such a sharp contrast to what I see outside, I just had to bring a bunch home.
A float trip down the San Marcos – we do it at least once every summer after the temps hit 100, and today was the 39th day this year that qualified.
While googling for info on 100 degree days in Austin, I found an article from about this time last year that said it still hadn’t hit 100 yet. Wow. I don’t remember it being a (relatively) mild summer last year. This summer has been a scorcher. No worries, though, we have many ways to beat the heat.
Toobers in attendance: me, monte, lori, dave, jake, laura and dolia. Even with the drought the San Marcos was flowing fine – the fact that it’s a spring-fed river has a lot to do with that, I think.
We stopped at the official take out point at the rapids, played a while, ate lunch and then continued on to our favorite take out point farther down the river. At the portage point with the waterfall, we stopped and played for a while – squeezing our way in underneath the falls.
We definitely have to come out another time this summer. It’s always a great time. And this time, I’m happy to report, I didn’t lose anything in the river.
We saw many kayakers on the river today and a couple of SUPs, too. Maybe we’ll make one of our next trips with kayaks, and see how much more of the river we can explore.
Yesterday a friend called for help with a car that wouldn’t start. I hopped into my car and headed over to meet her. Diagnosis was dead battery. We had her up in running in under 5 minutes.
As I was driving home, my mind drifted back in time…to a memory… from the summer of 1985… I had just bought my first car. It was a 1975 VW Rabbit – neon green (the picture doesn’t do the color justice).
The day I brought it home, my dad came out to the driveway to take a look. The first thing he said to me was, “do you know how to change the tire?” I nodded yes. He said, “show me.” I proceeded to root through the trunk to find the jack and spare and got down on the ground to look for where the jack was supposed to be placed under the chassis. When I wasn’t sure of the next step, he gave me a little help. After about 15 minutes I had it jacked up, the nuts off and the tire changed. Dad inspected it and then said, “do you know how to jump start a dead battery?” I said no. He proceeded to open the hood and show me the basics, which I’ve carried with me through the years since and many a dead battery – including yesterday’s.
He also showed me how to check the fluids and change the oil and filter, which I did myself on my cars for many years.
Afterwards, he turned and walked back into the house.
My dad was a man of few words and little emotion. I didn’t understand him back then. With the help of time, I have come to appreciate his intentions. He just wanted to make sure I knew how to take care of myself. So far, so good 🙂
Thanks Dad!
P.s…. here’s a youtube link to a little CSNY that came to mind as I wrote this post.
They’re everywhere! Saw this guy walking towards the gate at the end of the driveway as I pulled up to the house this evening. I got this shot as he scurried along the fence line.
I’ve lived here 15 years and never saw a live armadillo until about a month ago. They’re tearing up the back. Varmits!
We enjoyed a lazy Sunday at anchor. One definition of limin’ is to relieve from attention or effort; relax.
We definitely had that down today. Red Sky peeled off first thing in the morning, Va Bene left about lunch time. This is a shot of the 5 boats that were left. Joe joined us later on Prelude.
We floated for quite a while. This is a shot of a family of what we think are swan geese that was hanging out with us.
We all eventually ended up in Ramon’s cabin, which is air conditioned, has satellite TV and a big flat screen to watch the US women’s soccer team lose the world championship to Japan 😦
We saw Sue, who had been out on B-Dock for several hours when we pulled back into our slip.
We only spent about 24 hours on the lake, but it seemed like 72 or so after schlepping all our stuff back up the ever-steepening walk from the dock to the parking lot. We’ll do it again at the drop of a hat, though 🙂
Sheila365 