Tag: postaweek

It’s good to be back.

And then there were six.

We had planned to raft up last night, but as it turned out, we didn’t make it to the lake.  It ended up raining overnight, so it’s just as well that we weren’t out there.  Today we went to the marina to bring home the kayak and close up the boat.  It was nice to back on the lake.    It’s been a while, for me.   The temps were in the 90’s.  The water temps are in the high 70’s.  Tis the season for B-dockers to hang out on the lake every weekend.

We saw Joe, Mike, Marty, Sue, Jerry and Wally.   Sue has her stand-up paddle board in their slip.  So, she and I paddled up and down the dock for quite a while.  Along the way we saw lots of the neighborhood ducks.  The mom and babies in the shot above were not too leary of the kayak – we were able to get pretty close.  Though, I’m told that last week, this momma duck had seven babies, not six.

The shot below shows some of the ducks that have become quite accustomed to handouts from B-dock.  You can see one of the big carp under the surface of the water on the right side of the frame.

Throw me some’tin mistah!

Pretty boats.

American Treasure – Edward Hopper.

In the interest of spending less time running errands on the weekends, I have really embraced on-line shopping.  And not just for presents and big purchases but consumables – I’ve recently bought shampoo, sunscreen, batteries, light bulbs, hangers, replacement parts, adhesives, air filters…you name it.  It’s GREAT!

I signed up for Amazon Prime about 6 months ago.  It offers free 2-day shipping, and sometimes discounted prices, for many items.   It’s a god-send.  And only $79 a year.  You also get free online video streaming (which is handy with a kindle fire), and free e-books.  Check it out.

Amazon does sell postage stamps, but when I ran out this week, I just ordered from usps.com.  I usually buy a couple hundred Forever stamps at a time, and they show up in my mailbox in a day or two.

The picture above is of a sheet of Forever stamps that I ordered on Thursday that arrived today.  They are of a painting by Edward Hopper called The Long Leg, part of the American Treasures series of stamps.  Pretty, gaff-rigged sailboats.  I couldn’t resist.  I have admired several Edward Hopper paintings and drawings (especially The Cat Boat) over the years, but I don’t know much about him otherwise.   So I googled him and in the process of doing so, found a most awesome website for viewing art called wikipaintings.org.  What an amazing resource.  They have several hundred artists and many thousands of art work browsable and viewable online.  A must-have in your bookmark list.

Did someone say, “mimosa?”

Mimosa bloom.

Our mimosa tree out back is blooming.  It’s had a hard couple of years with freezes and droughts.  At one point we thought it was a goner.  It appeared to have a split in its trunk.  But, there’s still life in it.  The canopy is not covered with blooms this year, just a couple dozen.  I tried to capture one of the newer ones, here.

Street legal.


It’s usually the little things that matter most.  Monte may be retired, but he is not idle.  Today he signed up for car duty.  He took one of the cars to the shop to get new wheels, and some brake issue fixed.  Then he took that car to get inspected.  Then washed it.  THEN took my car to get inspected,  put the new license plates and reg sticker on, and washed IT as well.  I think the last time my car had current inspection AND registration stickers at the same time AND clean, too, was probably the day I bought it 15 years ago!

What a nice thing!  THANK YOU sweetie!  🙂

We (will) be limin’.

Limes-to-be.

Doray & Tom gave Monte a lime tree for his birthday (aka his “margarita tree”).   It’s blooming out back, now.  And after the blooms are spent, little baby limes are left behind.

Can’t wait for them to grow up.  Monte’s standing by with the juicer at the ready.  🙂

Springtime.

Red Yucca - orton-ish.

Oh My.  How fast the weekends fly by.

This is a shot of one of the flowers on the red yucca out back.   So pretty, yet so fleeting.

And, this is the tickseed that I planted several weeks ago.

Tickseed. Jethro Tull. Coreopsis.

Pretty yellow flowers.  It is also called jethro tull flower.  So, I’ll leave you with this:

Jethro Tull’s Songs from the Wood.

G’nite!

Home-made.

Black Seeded Simpson, all grown up.

This is the last of the lettuce that Monte planted about 6 weeks ago.  It’s all rinsed and spun and ready to eat.

In its place, lots of basil seed has been sown —  right next to the carrots, broccoli, and mystery squash.

Form over function.

Funny looking tree.

I do love driving up north of New York City.  In about a span of 5-10 minutes the scenery quickly turns from city sprawl to forest, hills, rocks and streams.   I can drive the route between La Guardia Aiport to Somers in my sleep.   There’s one sight on the Hutchinson River Parkway at about exit 24 that always makes me chuckle – a curious looking pine tree.

I decided to take of picture of it as I was zooming by in traffic today, on my way back to the airport.

Tree or not a tree?  🙂

Good advice.

THINK.

“And we must study through reading, listening, discussing, observing and thinking. We must not neglect any one of those ways of study.  The trouble with most of us is that we fall down on the latter — thinking — because it’s hard work for people to think.  And, as Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler said recently, ‘all of the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think.'”

                    — Thomas J. Watson, 1915 (audio)

IBM founder Thomas J. Watson was an inspiring figure and entrepreneur.  He introduced the “THINK” slogan in the early days of the company to motivate and inspire IBMers.  It was the first US trademark registered by IBM.  Over the century, this one-word slogan has adorned IBM buildings, publications, ads and presentations.  Back in the day, IBMers carried around small, leatherbound THINK note pads to capture great thoughts and ideas.

The original ThinkPad.

Those little notebooks later inspired the name of the IBM ThinkPad line of laptops in the 1990s.  I’ve always thought that was clever.  I think TJ Watson would, too.

Before I punch out…

IBM 016 Electrical Duplicating Keypunch - 1929.

Just a quick post before “punching out” for the night.   The meetings I’m attending this week are at an IBM facility.   IBM celebrated 100 years of innovation in 2011.   Let’s hope the next 100 are as impact-ful.  These and other former state-of-the-art artifacts grace the lobby.  The placard for this one says:

IBM 016 Electrical Duplicating Keypunch.  The development of automatic feeding and ejecting mechanisms for keypunches and duplicators helped to increase the speed of key punching and reduce operator fatigue.  The Type 016, introduced in 1929, fed cards into the punching unit and automatically removed or ejected the cards after punching.  It was withdrawn from marketing in 1960.

This one’s even older.   Not electric.  Notice the hand crank.

IBM 501 Automatic Numbering Gang Punch - 1926.

And it says:

IBM 501 Automatic Numbering Gang Punch. Brought to market in 1926, the Type 501 automatically recorded on a series of punched cards common fixed data from a master card. This punch operated at the rate of 125 cards per minute, and was withdrawn from marketing in April 1948.

I guess progress is always relative to where you’ve been…

Day and night.

Pink Pentas.

This morning started early, as usual.  I’m leaving for NY again this morning and I still had to pack.  I took a walk out back after a few calls.  This is a shot of one of the recently planted pentas, well in bloom;  with droplets from this morning’s watering still there.

I made it to La Guardia without incident.  This is a shot going over the Whitestone Bridge – perennially under construction.   The sunset was pretty.  I was hoping to get a shot of Manhattan from the port side of the plane, but for some reason, the plane approached from the east on landing, instead of the west, so I missed getting a shot.

Westchester bound.

 

Gimme a kiss.

Keeto at about 8 months.

Keeto is about 8 months old.  His flight feathers are in and he has mastered flying.  He loves to sit on his perch in the window, which is about 2 feet away from a hummingbird feeder.   When the hummingbirds fly up to the feeder, I don’t know who is more freaked out, the hummingbirds or Keeto.   He also will fly between Monte and I when we are all sitting down to watch TV.   He seems to be pretty house-trained.   Good thing. …and he loves to give kisses.

Today is day 2 of an absolutely beautiful weekend.   Monte has headed to the lake,  and I am working.   Ok.  Well.  I will be as soon as I post this.

We are looking forward to a fun evening at the One World Theatre.   For Christmas, I gave monte tickets for 2 for the Diane Schuur concert this evening.   I made him humongous paper tickets for the gift.  The real tix are actually at will-call.   But we’re bringing the home-made tickets with us to see if they’ll let us in with them anyway 🙂

Great seats.

Oh, and Happy Earth Day!

My favorite lantana.

Multi-colored lantana bloom.

Lantana grows here in abundance, without needing anything from humans to help it along.  It is one of the great native flowering plants in Central Texas.

We have yellow, orange, purple and white lantana in different places in our yard.   But my favorite is the multi-colored pink & yellow lantana.  Before we built the shop, there was a beautiful, huge multi-colored lantana growing right in the middle of where the slab was to be poured.   It ended up getting torn out.  I’ve mourned the loss of that lantana ever since.

So, today I was very happy to see a new lantana growing in the backyard that is just starting to pop out with those great multi-colored blooms.

Yay!

So pretty.

Friday. Friends. Fun. And fundraising.

MS-150 Tee.

This is the weekend of the annual Houston-to-Austin MS-150 bike ride.  I don’t ride, but I am a sherpa (along with Irene) for 3 friends that are riding:  Lori, Doray and Laura.  For the last 10 years or so, they have been riding and fundraising for the MS-150.  And I ride in the truck with them from Austin to Houston.  We eat every year at Lomonte’s, an awesome Italian restaurant right off I-10.  We stay in the hotel overnight.  I take them to the start line in the morning, and then drive the truck back home.  It’s a sweet deal for me, because I’m home by 10AM saturday morning.  They pedal their way back all-day saturday and sunday.

It’s a fun girls’ weekend – for a good cause.  🙂

Nuff said. Nite nite.