South of the city

This weekend we made the journey south on 35 to New Braunfels to the much ballyhooed Schiltterbahn. It was a nice way to beat the heat, but I didn't take any photos. (Water parks are no place for cell phones). Instead, I'm finally posting some photos taken from our last jaunt south to San Antonio and Greune (so pretty much New Braunfels) the weekend before Sam's birthday. 

Sam is now an official Texan after experiencing the timeless passage of being underwhelmed by the Alamo. 

 We didn't really have too many plans for our brief time in San Antonio. Mostly we just went to the Alamo and did the obligatory walking in circles along the Riverwalk for a while. I'm sure there are other things to do in San Antonio; I just don't know what they are.

A pretty impressive wall sized mosaic under a bridge on the Riverwalk.

Riverwalk, in all its glory. 

 Rather than eat dinner in San Antonio, we decided to stop in Gruene to go to the Gristmill. I had fond memories of that place from a trip I took with friends after prom in high school. One of my friends got together with her husband on that trip. Although in my case the main thing I remember is the delicious chicken fried steak and the lovely river views. Sam is nothing if not a fan of steak (chicken fried, or otherwise_, so I figured we should stop in and see if it lived up to my memories. You couldn't see the river from where we were seated, but the chicken fried steaks were suitably massive.

Supposedly Gruene Hall is one of the oldest continuously operating dance halls in Texas.

Picturesque Gruene

We were really just stopping by Gruene for dinner on the way out of town, but I'd like to check it out more in the future. Especially since it's only about 45 minutes from us. It has a number of cute little shops and restaurants worth a look. And now at last, I'm all caught up on blogging. And a good thing too as we have a visitor coming this weekend, so I suspect we'll doing plenty of photogenic and blog-worthy things.

I don't hate California

Prior to the wedding, we had a few days to spend in California. We spent them in Mountain View, San Francisco, and the cute wine country and coastal areas around Occidental. I hadn't been out to California in about four years, which made me realize I've been pretty lax about visiting. I suppose my sister should get married more often. I am also committed to coming for the first niece or nephew. In the meantime, it really is a beautiful place and earthquakes, drought, and high cost of living aside, I can't help wondering why everyone doesn't live there. Everywhere you look are stunning vistas, perfectly rolling hills, and lovely and diverse flora. Not too shabby, northern California. 

My mom and I in the Mission.

These are a bit out of order, but we spent one day in San Francisco. On the advice of my parents, we checked out the free San Francisco Cable Car Museum. It's small, but very interesting. They have a real cable car bell you can ring which is surprisingly loud and gets quite old when kids won't stop ringing it. It was also just very interesting to read about how the city changed and rebuilt after the earthquake and fire destroyed it in the early 20th century. Perhaps the coolest thing though is that you can see the actual sheaves (a new word I learned; pronounced 'shiv') and cables running the eight cable car lines in the city. It's a pretty impressive show of simple but powerful machines at work.

Sheaves and cables, labeled by line

 After the transportation museum and a quick pop in to Grace Cathedral, we commenced our much-missed favorite activity of city walking. We walked to Fisherman's Wharf and Ghirardelli Square and from there down to the Ferry Building for snacks. Completing the giant loop, we stopped in Chinatown for dim sum and returned to our hotel in Nob Hill for a break because I had a tiki bar crawl bachelorette party to attend that night.

We took a bunch of pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, but those are all overdone. This is my favorite picture from our city walk. 

 The day before all this (I was just too lazy to re-sort the pictures when they loaded like this), we went out to Silicon Valley to a party at my sister's then-future-and-now-current in-laws place for a party.

The stunning view from their house. Their neighbors have their own small vineyard.

 On the way out, so as to beat the apparently notorious traffic out of San Francisco, we stopped in Mountain View to visit the Computer History Museum. This museum made me realize just how much of computer technology is over my head, but it is a very interesting museum and very well organized. We only had about an hour before it closed, and I think I spent a little too much time puttering around the early stages of computer development and didn't get to appreciate the later stuff. Luckily, I did at least make time to sit in the self-driving car.

Sam took many artsy pictures of the displays at the Computer History Museum. 

 After our time in the Bay Area, we headed north to Occidental for wedding-central. The day before we had some time to go wine tasting and to visit a grove of Redwoods nearby. The Inn kindly provided us some passes for a few free tastings.

At a winery with my parents and cousin Mark. I realize, per the usual, Sam is in none of these photos.

Family amongst the trees. 

On the morning of the wedding, a few of us took a quick jaunt to Bodega Bay and to see the Pacific. It really made me miss seeing the ocean every day. I usually don't think about living in a landlocked city now, but there's something very refreshing about being so close to the crashing waves.

The mighty Pacific.

That basically wraps up our trip. It was nice to be able see some family, I don't get to see very often. And the wedding was of course the highlight, but the whole vacation was a nice getaway. 

Double the brides, double the fun

I've gotten terribly behind on writing about all the busy and important things in my life because I was obviously off doing busy and important things. The last two weekends have been full of fun things at least, but then this week I was too busy due to less fun things like catching up on all the work that accumulated while I was away. That said, catch up I will! I feel like each event deserves its own post, so I hope to post several times over the next few days and in reverse chronological order: wedding, trip to California, and Sam's birthday. This is not to say that the latter is the least important, of course, just that in reverse chronological order it shall come last.

This post, however, will focus on my sister's wedding to her longtime girlfriend (and all around awesome lady) Aileen. They got married on July 11, which makes for not only a memorable date, but also will entitle them to free slurpees at all participating 7/11s on their anniversary. The wedding was in a gorgeous bed and breakfast in the small town of Occidental. In addition to being an idyllic wedding locale, it was also the perfect location for going both wine tasting and visiting the coast (both of which we did, and will be covered in the upcoming vacation post). Sam took a bunch of pictures as is his way, but I'm only adding a few because I'm holding out to see what the professional photographer came up with. He seemed to be everywhere all the time, so I imagine they got a few hundred excellent shots.

As part of their ceremony, the brides had a water communion. It's a Unitarian Universalist tradition, or at least it was done at my parent's church growing up. People would bring water from their travels over the summer and pour it into one bowl to symbolize coming back together each new year. Wedding guests were instructed to bring water from their homes or place of meaning to them. I collected some from Barton Creek here in Austin the week before the wedding. Guests could pour the water into either Aileen or Carolyn's vase (or some in both if you were a mutual friend). Then during the ceremony they poured the two vases of water together. They actually ended up with too much water which added another nice layer of symbolism. Their cup runneth over with love and also their friends and family are very good at following directions.

My mom pouring her Houston water. 

During the ceremony itself, photography was verboten so as to better appreciate the service, therefore the rest of the photos I have are from the reception. Sam took this photo of the courtyard from above. The space looked so small without tables that we were amazed everyone could fit, but it turned out to be absolutely perfect. Another bridesmaid and I took bets to see which guest would get too tipsy and fall in the fountain, but, as was probably for the best, no one did.

The courtyard. Our table was later moved so people could dance.

The beautiful brides! You can also see a corner of the cool succulent centerpieces they made. I wish I could have taken one home. 

My one job (other than a short reading in the ceremony) was to give a toast, but I totally botched it. I had come up with some ideas of what I wanted to say, but then for some reason decided I could otherwise wing it. I'm not a great public speaker, but I figured the problem would be nerves and forgetting some of what I wanted to say. What I didn't anticipate was that I would get emotional and totally lose it up there in front of 80 people, some of whom I had just met. A bit embarrassing, and if I'm ever asked to do a toast again, I will be rehearsing it until I can recite it robotically in my sleep. Nevertheless, the gist of what I wanted to say, since I don't know that any of it came across through the blubbering, is that I feel very lucky to have had Carolyn as a sister and I'm so excited to have another sister in Aileen now. And that seeing them together is a wonderful thing because it's clear not only how much they love each other but how much they like each other and the genuine pleasure they get from being together, even just doing everyday things.

Aileen's dad Hoover, giving a toast like a champ in a not-at-all embarrassing way. 

My parents at the reception. Just thought it was a good shot of you two.

I realize I don't have any pictures of me from this wedding. The only ones Sam took were of me walking down the aisle pre-ceremony, but I didn't want to post those because he was not supposed to be taking photos. And again, I suspect the professional photographer may have gotten a shot or two of me. All in all, it was a wonderful wedding, and I'm so happy we were able to be a part of it. Now, stay tuned, as I'll try to post about all these other things over the next few days. 

A porch reborn

Mostly for my own pride in homeownership, I wanted to post a recent project Sam and I conquered. When we bought this house, there was a wooden deck in the back. It wasn't a major selling point for the house or anything, but it did seem nice to have an elevated place to put a table and grill. In fact, one of our earliest new home purchases was to buy a table and umbrella to rest on this deck.

It wasn't too long after that that we noticed it was rotting. It turns out the wood was never weather treated (one of the many rather confusing choices of the previous homeowners). That combined with the lack of gutter on the back of the house dumping water straight onto it, led to pretty fast deterioration. We considered painting it to slow the rot at least on the top side, although then it would still be getting moisture underneath. Before we could begin this project though, we had some people over at the house for a dinner party. It was our first time hosting people and since some of them were smokers, they spent a fair amount of time enjoying the chairs and table on the back porch. Then Sam went to turn the lights on for them, and his foot went right through the porch. 

It was at this point that we figured we might as well demolish the rest of the thing as it was now dangerous, as well as unsightly. Sam was between jobs at the time, so he was able to devote himself full time to the demolition of the deck. 

About half done. 

Ripping up all the boards with a crowbar and sledge took about a week. The deck had a pretty simple construction, but it did have five cement blocks to anchor it, so those had to be dug up as well. I will say, seeing all the wood and screws that went into constructing it, as we removed each individual board, it really compounds my fascination that someone would go through all that trouble and then not make sure it was actually weather proofed. 

Once the deck was gone, and the rotting wood hauled away, we realized we still needed something in its place. The demolition of the deck uncovered a small cement slab porch, which would have sufficed for a couple of chairs. Since we already had an outdoor dining set that wouldn't fit on the existing slab, we needed a way to extend it. We didn't want to sink the money into building a new deck (and definitely wouldn't invest in one without also getting gutters). As a temporary solution, we decided to gravel a larger area around the slab.

First we needed to level the area with some dirt. We made a perimeter with some landscaping border and filled it in with excess dirt from our extensive plumbing repairs. Always nice to save a little money with free dirt (or $15K dirt, depending on how you look at it). We then covered the dirt with landscaping fabric. 

Free dirt! This is pre-landscaping fabric and before Sam had a chance to tamp everything down. 

The last step was buying gravel. We'd originally decided on pea gravel, but after I accidentally bought 10 bags of Colorado river rocks and lugged them home, we decided to switch to that. To save on the delivery fee and because we weren't sure exactly how much gravel we would need (my estimations turned out to be way too high), we just made multiple trips over the course of a week until the entire area was graveled. We also put up a wooden border to hide the ugly landscaping border and keep the rocks from spilling over.

The finished product

It started out as a temporary solution, but I actually really like the way it came out. I'm also hopeful it will take care of some of the mosquito problem we were experiencing because I think water was pooling up in places under the porch. Now we just need to get that BBQ grill and we're ready for summer in our backyard.