Texas Blue Lime Productions

On our 3rd day of Christmas, we

• woke up early enough to get on the road before most traffic
• left Paris at 9:30 and and made it to Austin by 2pm
• settled in and had our own Christmas exchange and then relaxed for the rest of the evening

On our second day of Christmas, we:

• sleep in just a little (until about 9am),
  and then
• Mom finished a few meal and gift preparations
  while
• Emil ran all the virus and software updates on her computer and got the printer working, again,
  before we headed “over the river and through the woods” (not really) for a
• noon meal for the five of us (Lori & Emil, Lori’s mom, and her parents) at the grandparents’ home, at the dining table, with the fancy dishes,
  and then we shared
• gifts with the grands,
  and then went
• back to Lori’s mom’s for our nuclear gift exchange, playing with Roxi,
  and a bit of recovering from a busy day

Lori's grandmother's Southern relish tray (embellished by Emil)

the 2009 O'Brien Christmas tree includes Lori's mom's Baby's First Christmas ornament up top. It's red, so it matches her hair!!! LOL

Our first day of Christmas (and our first major holiday since the move to Austin [1]) was jam packed.

9am – leave Austin for Bryan
11am – 2nd group to arrive on scene at Luza Christmas
12noon – giant family lunch, 65 in attendance, paper plates and a seat on the deck
1pm – visit with family, watch Mom and the kids open gifts
4pm – after the mass exodus of her home, we visited with Mom and the remaining family
5pm – leave Bryan for Paris
10pm – arrive in Paris

What a day!

[1] Thanksgiving would have been our first try at this travel pattern, but Lori came down with a cold bug. She too sick to travel, but more importantly, we didn’t want to infect anyone else.

Now that we neither one work for a university, our holiday cycles have shifted. For example, Emil had to work late for this year’s election day (He works for the County Clerk), but Veterans’ Day was a county holiday. So, he planned a wonderful little mid-November mini-vacay for us…to Fredericksburg.

Wednesday morning, we slept in, loaded the car, took a scenic drive, and were in town by 2pm. We found the headquarters for the B&B and checked in. Our cabin was ~15 minutes out of town on 21 acres. It was peaceful bliss.

The outdoor shower is amazing, even in November.

As soon as we had the car unloaded, we sat in the rockers on the front porch and watched the birds and butterflies. The weather was just perfect—~70 degrees and a gorgeous day—so there was much to see.

We made a few little and tentative plans for the evening. We hadn’t had a vacation in a long time and have rarely had one that didn’t have an agenda of events to attend and sights to see. It was nice to have four days with nothing particular to do. We’ve been to Fredericksburg several times. We’ve seen the shops and toured the wineries. This time, we were here without much new to see.

We headed into town for dinner at the Rathskeller. Lori had a glass of Columbia Crest Shiraz and the avocado crab dip, which turned out to be our server’s favorite menu item. Emil had the Weiner Schnitzel with buttered noodles (shocker, huh?). Our meal was fabulous! There were six desserts on the menu that all sounded wonderful as well. So, when we are craving sweets, that will be one of the first places we think of.

We returned to our cabin to take advantage of the amenities. The dew had already begun to settle, so without dry wood, we had to postpone a fire, but the sky was 100% clear and the stars were the brightest we’d seen in a very long time. We stargazed on the front porch and had a little mini-scrabble tournament with our own flex on the rules and no scoring. We determined the winner by who went out first. Lori won both matches. Once we crawled into bed, we were both goners. The bed had one of those Tempurdepic mattress toppers. The only way to describe this bed is to say that it “eats” you. At 5am Lori awoke to the cold (it was probably ~40 degrees outside and we slept with the windows open), so we watched dawn creep up and watched the sunrise all while still bundled under the covers.

We went for an early breakfast at Taqueria Altos de Jalisco’s. It was fabulous. Then, we drove to the Old Tunnel where we saw our first bat emergence a few years ago. The sign said they had emerged the night before, but only took ~10 minutes to leave the tunnel; the season had, technically, passed. We decided it probably wasn’t worth a visit at night. We walked down to the tunnel viewing area, saw the few bats that haven’t migrated, yet, and then took a scenic drive back to our cabin with a little stop at the visitor’s center for more information about the Nimitz museum (and the new part that is supposed to open in December) and other area attractions.

We spent the afternoon riding our bikes around the property, viewing the other cabin still under construction, and seeing the new bridge that the neighbor is building to cross a creek. We also spent another chunk of time watching the birds and butterflies. Again, it was great to have nothing to do!

bike trail

Thursday evening, we went into town for dinner and some German beer and then came back to the cabin. Emil was victorious in 3-out-of-4 games: Scrabble (with scores this time), Ticket to Ride, and the first of two rounds of dominos.

Friday the 13th started off true to fame. We were going to have breakfast at Andy’s, but it wasn’t in the cards. The place was crowded with only two servers. Of course, as luck would have it on this day, we got the much slower, weaker, forgetful server. She wanted us to want coffee and juice and was befuddled that we did not. Then, she was ready to take our order before we had read the menu. We asked for just one minute, but she never returned. We watched her take the order of several other tables, skipping us every time. We looked around, held our menus over to the side, and made eye contact with the other server. It felt like she couldn’t serve us because we didn’t fit the mold of coffee-drinking breakfast diners—-and we weren’t even the youngest people in the place! Emil’s comment was, “Clearly, she’s never played Diner Dash!” So, we headed back to Taqueria Altos de Jalisco’s where we knew we’d get good food and good service.

And then came the massages from Above and Beyond Day Spa. Emil signed us up for massages (a first for both of us) at our cabin. Mmmmmm.

The massage therapists had gotten lost on the way to our cabin and said there were some buffalo about three miles north of us. So, after the “massage-hangover” subsided a bit, we hoped in the car to go see them. They weren’t near the fence along the road, though, and we never found them. Instead we made the loop around to Enchanted Rock. Emil hadn’t been since he was a kid and Lori had never seen it. Eventhough we weren’t dressed for it, we made the short-but-not-easy hike to the summit. From the parking lot it was a 465’ climb over .6 miles. The top is at 1800’ and offers some fantastic views of the Hill Country.

The way back from Enchanted Rock led us back into town too early for supper, so we headed out to Luckenbach. It felt a little like a petting zoo this time. A guy with a longhorn and saddle was loading up his prop photo business as we arrived. One of the resident cats, Miss Kitty, let us love on her for at least a minute or two. And, the chickens and roosters were very active and quite entertaining to watch. It was nearing sunset, and they were getting ready to roost. It was funny to watch them go from the ground to a table to a roof to the limbs of the tree. Some of them even preferred to be way up in the tree and not just on the first branch they could reach.

When it started to get chilly, we headed back to town for supper. Dinner at Kelly’s Café was amazing.

After such an active afternoon, we were both ready to go back to our cabin for more of the R&R part of our trip. We each won one game of Ticket to Ride and then Lori beat Emil in two dominos matches.

We sank into bed early and then slept in on Saturday morning. We got up just in time to pack up, check out, have a leisurely breakfast, and get on the road to Austin for a big game day: a Miami watch party at the Daily Grill and the Settlers of Catan board game group at Dragon’s Lair.

We (finally!) took another adventure this weekend. Emil found the town of Kingsland and planned a nice route of driving for us.

After a very scenic drive through this edge of Hill Country, we had a GREAT burger at Storm’s in the little lake town of Kingsland.

rails to trails near Kingsland

LOW Water

Next, we found a neighborhood with a boat ramp and marina and were really able to see just how badly the lack of rain has impacted the area.

The crude blue lines represent our best guess at where a normal water line would be.

That’s the end of the boat ramp…not the end where you put off into the water, but the end that’s waaaaay down there so your trailer can get all the way under the boat when you put in or take out….this is the end you are never supposed to find with a sunken trailer, nevermind see a few feet from the water!

We could tell the water line’s original place by the way the rocks changed colors.

This is the much-too-low marina. It’s so far down that the slips and the ramp don’t even connect.

This jet ski must have been left in the dock after the water went down and is now landlocked.

If the water were normal, half this picture would be water.

All this is normally water (that’s the same dock).

Inks Lake State Park

Because we have a pass, we were able to visit Inks Lake State Park. They have a nice little lake and tons of camping. I hope that once we get our camping gear (and once it cools off) that we can go enjoy the park for a weekend.

There is a scenic overlook of the lake:

and the Devil’s Watering Hole:

Again, this is our best guess based on moss growing , but we think the water would normally be MUCH higher.

And, if you want to see these “tweenage” “cliff divers”,here is a video of the teens jumping off the cliff into the Devil’s Watering Hole.

We had a great time. Adventures like this are one of the many reasons we moved to Austin in the first place. It was nice to get to take advantage of our new surroundings.

We have been slow to update and that is mostly because we’ve traveled back to Bryan a LOT. After, getting the apartment, packing, and moving, we also traveled for these reasons:

• 30 May  – a wedding
• 13 June – a wedding
• 20 June – to have the carpets cleaned
• 22 June – to get something from the house that we both thought was already in Austin; Lori made a special day trip
• 27 June – Emil’s neice’s wedding
• 2 July – to Paris. Happy Birthday to Lori’s grandparents (3rd and 4th) and to celebrate Independence day with the Parisites.

For the 4th, we headed back to ATX. We wanted to hear the Austin Symphony play 1812 Overture with real cannon fire and see the fireworks over the lake. It was amazing.

photo from the Austin American Statesman

Read about the Austin festivities.

Happy Independence Day to you all.

With all that we’ve had going on in December, Emil and I needed a weekend away. The weather has been so nice for camping that we took a little trip over to Smithville, Texas and stayed at Buecher State Park. As always, Emil planned the perfect little getaway for us.

Friday, we left immediately after work. This meant we had to set up in the dark, but we are so familiar with our tent, that that wasn’t much of a challenge for us. The wonderful weather and a night under the stars was so refreshing.

Saturday, we explored the quaint little town of Smithville. They have two main claims to fame: Hope Floats was filmed there and they were the first town to receive the “filming friendly” designation in Texas. They also hold the Guinness record for the largest Gingerbread man. It’s a friendly town. We did some exploring—for those who like old stuff, there were several antique stores in the downtown area—and visited their train museum. For the afternoon, I read a book and took some photos (see As You Wish’s Project 365) while Emil napped. (Did I mention the point was to rest and relax?)

Saturday evening, we drove to La Grange—we didn’t find the Chicken Ranch or Miss Mona—and then back to another nearby town for dinner. Winchester has a population of less than 50, but the capacity of this restaurant was easily 100 or more. We had fabulous steaks, yummy sides, amazing salads (really!), and their secret-recipe beans. We waddled back to the car full and quite happy. That night, we slept through a cold front moving in. The wind and freezing rain kept us in our sleeping bags, so we must have resembled our Umpa Lumpa.

We took our time coming home and exploring a bit. It was a great little weekend getaway. Should any of you need such an excursion, I strongly recommend you hire Emil to be your travel planner!

After everything was ready for the Condo Warming party on Saturday, Leanne took us to the Dallas Aquarium. We’d only been one other time (with Diane and Jonathan when they still lived in the town she liked to call “Louisville”).

It was super-crowded and full of children whose adults don’t parent them, but we still had a great time.

There are a lot of bad photos (curved glass, people bumping into me, reflections, etc.), but there are a few gems in the group, too. And, we’d never seen so much porn in one day!

Monkey Porn!

Actually, they are Pygmie-sized something other than monkeys, but Monkey Porn is funnier. And yes, those are his privates on display for all.

Look how fast this guy was moving!

Even I found it hard to be a ‘Gator Hater when they are curled up and cuddling….

I really cranked the settings to the extreme to get any shot at all of the bats….

We watched these turtles for a long time. The smaller one “bottomed out” on the log and was stuck there flapping his legs and tail trying to get enough leverage to move back into the water. Like most critters, the bigger one decided he wanted to be there, so he came along and “rescued” the smaller one back into the water. The whole scene was quite comical. (And, as we were leaving, a third, even larger turtle was headed up the log.)

These seahorses were amazing to watch (and ridiculously difficult to photograph!)

Animated Anemone

I have an entire series I’m calling Animated Anemone. As soon as I figure out how to animate the image series, I’ll put that online, too.

Turtle Porn!

Turtle porn wasn’t nearly as “interesting” as Monkey Porn.

We are leaving town at 5pm to head back to Dallas. This time, we get to spend the weekend with Leanne and attend her Condo Warming!

yippie!

Emil had a workshop—Computer Forensics, watch out CSI!—in Austin a couple of weeks ago. I joined him for a couple of days of shooting while he was in class. On Thursday, I went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the botanical gardens at Zilker Park. I also considered the sculpture gardens, but the drizzling rain kept me and the camera gear away. Plus, it didn’t seem to be my thing. Friday, I located a couple of places we were considering going and hit a couple of other museum grounds and parks. What a wonderful trip!

Saturday, we took Beth & Marc’s dogs, Bailey & Isis, to the dog park and had a wonderful time. Sunday, we went hiking down to the West Cave nature preserve where we learned a lot about Austin’s nature and water! The grotto and caves at the bottom of the trail are well-worth the beautiful hike.

Here are my favorite images from the long (for me) weekend: