House and home

Apologies for the long delay in blog posting. I've been putting all my writing energy into doing paid freelance work over the last few weeks. I love all of my blog readers, but until you pay me by the word, that will sadly take precedence. I also realized I'm not really sure what this post will be about. I feel like our adventures lately have been less exciting/interesting/photo-worthy and more domestic/learning things about homeownership-y. 

For example, we recently learned that we were supposed to be watering our trees all summer. The tree guy who came by (which also: why is tree trimming to expensive?) explained that our six ash are not long for the world due to age and also that they're dying of thirst. This is one of many many seemingly obvious truths to homeownership, or in this case tree ownership, that I feel like I was already supposed to know. How could the trees survive the last 15 years without being drought resistant? At any rate, we've learned you pay a price for that shade.

In addition to spending money on our trees last month, we had another homeowner milestone: buying a grill. We had a bunch of people over for a Labor Day BBQ. It does seem nice that the weather is finally getting lovely out so that we can enjoy our backyard again. I'm looking forward to more gardening now that I'm not worried everything will instantly die. 

A photo of Sam grilling like a pro. I took this through the window with the rest of our guests. It was still really hot. 

 Another big purchase (I feel like all we really did last month is spend money) was to finally outfit our kitchen nook. For those unfamiliar with the floor plan of our house, it has a galley kitchen that ends in a little windowed room at the front of the house, presumably intended for a breakfast area. Frankly, I think the whole kitchen layout should be changed and that space better incorporated. Since we're not going to do that, we needed a new plan, as for the last 6 months that room has been used only for the cat food and litter box. Enter the Crate and Barrel kitchen island. It will provide more prep space outside of the small kitchen while also doubling as a place to have coffee in the morning.

This photo was totally staged. There's nothing in Sam's coffee mug. But this is theoretically where we would drink real coffee in the mornings. 

This photo has nothing to do with home projects, but I made slow cooker coq au vin for a dinner party the other day and this pic was on my phone. Might not look like much, but it was delicious! 

This next project was actually done a while ago, but is still something I'm proud of and (I don't think) ever actually posted about. I wanted a new coffee table but didn't want to pay for the one I liked at World Market, so I made one. Of course, by the time I got all the materials, the price of the one at World Market had dropped, and I only ended up saving about $50. BUT, mine also turned out looking nicer, so I'm happy. I keep waffling about also trying to make a dining room table, but I know that's a much bigger project, so I'm trying to keep my ambition in check, at least until I actually learn how to use a jig saw. Or figure out what a jig saw is. 

Coffee table. Here was the inspiration for it (which I'm happy to see is no longer on sale). 

I think that's about all of the random home projects we've done lately. Hopefully will have more interesting (and god willing, less expensive) adventures to post of soon. Until then, I'm just glad to be done with freelance projects for the year. 

A pair of visitors

We're always excited to have takers on our offer of guest room and this weekend in particular we had a couple of excellent guests: my parents. They were in town just for a visit but they also took us out for some excellent meals, entertained me on my last summer Friday, and graciously put in several hours of assembly work for a rather large Bard's Cards order. Thanks for that!

While they were here, we visited the Blanton and the Ransom Center. Our year long membership is nearly up at the Blanton, and I can't say we've ever really taken advantage of it. It's not a huge museum, and they don't have anything well known in their collection, but it's still worth popping in from time to time. Also on Friday, after dinner, we stopped by to see the bats come out. The last time I'd tried, the bats came out too late and it was too dark to really see them. This time we were right in the high season. They really are quite a sight. 

People, and some bats, as taken from Sam's iphone. I would be interested to see more of the pics/videos my dad took on his fancy camera

Us waiting fairly patiently for the bats to make their appearance. Unfortunately, you can't set your clock by bats. 

On Saturday, we had two excellent meals. In between, to work up an appetite for the next eating occasion, we went to UT to see the tower. I'd never been up in it, and really is a pretty nice view of the city. The tour didn't go into some of the darker parts of the tower's history, but the amount of security you go through to get up there covers that well enough.

View from the top! Not that you can really see the view behind us. 

Thanks again for coming to visit, parents! We'll try to return the favor and make it out to Houston sometime soon.

A watery weekend

Last weekend (that is the one prior to this one) we were lucky enough to visit my grandmother and aunt in Arlington. I foolishly didn't take any photos of our trip which is why I didn't post of it. Other than the outrageously high temperatures while we were there, it was a lovely visit. It's a definite advantage of living close by now. Seeing my grandmother in the summer, reminded me of her wonderful peach ice cream. I tried making some of my own last week. It turned out pretty well, but I did determine my ice cream maker may be on its last legs.

 Last week, it was also incredibly hot, but I'd been wanting to go to Blues on the Green all summer and it was the last one. Blues on the Green is a free concert series in Zilker Park. Tons of people go and parking can be an issue. We ended up parking about 20 minutes away and walking through the park. It was fun to see parts of the park I'd never seen before, but it was also 100 degrees which  made the walk seem longer than it needed to be. I enjoyed hanging out and listening to music, but I also ended up desperately spending $5 on a snow cone (well, plus a $4 ATM fee...so really: $9 on a snow cone).  

Austinites ready to listen to Shakey Graves. 

Anyway, after three weeks or so of highs in the low 100s, the fever that had settled on central Texas finally broke this weekend. This weekend and the whole week has been highs in the upper 90s, and I never thought I would appreciate them as much as I do. We went out to Jacob's Well near Wimberly on Saturday. It's a spring fed swimming hole, so it's always cold water. When I say "swimming hole," it actually is just a really deep underwater cave. A number of people have gone cave diving down there and apparently many have died. There were signs entering the park warning that scuba diving was illegal. This article has some interesting background about their attempts to keep inexperienced people from potentially killing themselves. Experienced cave divers have mapped it though and the passageways extend for many thousands of feet.

Sam with scones on the walk about to Jacob's Well. Can't so swimming without scones!

 There's a great jumping rock right about the well. It's nice to know you can jump in and have no fear of hitting the bottom. The problem is when you're up on the rock, you get nervous about hitting the cliff on the way down. You only have to jump out a tiny bit to clear it, but it's enough to get in your head. The first time I jumped, I spent a good 5 minutes standing up there contemplating.

A girl making the running leap.

 Sam jumped from a lower rock, unfortunately at the exact same moment as another girl (a miscommunication on her part). I captured the near calamity below. Luckily both were fine.

I also captured a nice bit of my finger. 

 On Sunday the weather continued to be lovely, so we took to the water again. Some friends own a boat and took us out to Lake Austin for some floating and general merriment. There's definitely a culture to boat ownership. We had a lot of fun. Sam tried wakeboarding, although I didn't. He didn't stay up too long, but if the water was less choppy (i.e. when there are fewer other boats), he has the makings of a natural wakeboarder. I declined to wakeboard, but I did do some rope swings that were hanging from the shore. Jumping off stuff into water is definitely more my speed.

Sam, the wakeboarder. 

So far this week is continuing to be mild. Fingers crossed the waning days of summer will continue to be kind to us.

The out-of-towner

This past weekend and a bit of this week we had a visitor in from up north. Sam's niece joined us for a long weekend. I don't think she was totally prepared for the scorching heat (it was a high of at least 100 every day she was here), but we managed to have some fun. She's a budding photographer, so she took most of the pictures while she was here. It's funny how much her photography skills take after Sam. Both of them will photograph a beautiful view only when prompted but love taking photos of interesting signs or little details. I feel like looking at their photos at the end of the day, I always notice things I wouldn't have picked up otherwise. Unfortunately, I didn't think to get any photos off of her, and because I'm less the consummate photographer, I only have a few to share.  

Sam was working the first day she was in town, but I took her to Barton Springs, to get ramen, and to the shops of South Congress. Sam joined us after work and we got tacos and went up to Mount Bonnell to watch the sunset. I managed to capture a rare photo of Sam as well.

On Saturday we sent stand-up paddle boarding on Town Lake followed by horseback riding. We went horseback riding in what was unfortunately the hottest part of the day. There was a bit of a breeze for some of it and I always enjoy riding, so it didn't turn out to be as miserable as I thought it would be. Sam was riding in the back, so naturally he took a million photos, much like this one, of us riding in front of him. 

We kind of overdid it on Saturday, so Sunday and Monday we took it very easy. Monday we visited the graffiti walls of the Hope Outdoor Gallery and the downtown Whole Foods as well as a few shops and sites downtown. Our guest had no interest in touring the capitol building, which is a position I quite respect, although we did glance at it from afar. She also had no interest in seeing the bats of the South Congress bridge. This makes her officially the third visitor we've had that said they were scared of bats. I guess I need a better way to market bats to people.

All in all, it was an enjoyable visit. We'd welcome her back any time, although I have a feeling she'll opt for the more reasonable October to March months next time. Austin summer is no joke.

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.