An entirely satisfactory weekend. Oh, hello June.
It seems most people I know had a pretty good Memorial Day weekend, myself included.
Much of it was spent trying to avoid the heat of the sun, because let's face it, it's getting bloomin' hot here in Austin. While the Koens and Knotts went off to Rockport, I decided to spend the weekend here around town, learning how to cook different things with the same four ingredients, and hanging out with friends. Incidentally, those four ingredients are salmon filets, chicken breasts, onions, and mushrooms. Tomatoes and rice are added in, depending on what it is I come up with. They also involve either the toaster oven or the charcoal grill. So far, I've done a basic grilled salmon, basic grilled chicken, salmon on rice, salmon with stir-fried vegetables, chicken tacos (which rock), and combinations hitherto. Seriously, it's hard to make something that tastes BAD with just salmon, chicken, or tuna. It may not taste great, but certainly not bad.
Saturday, we had a small dinner at Steven and Courtney's of BBQ chicken (yum), pasta salad (YUM), and root beer floats (yum). Being nice out, there was much chatting and playing with the dog on the back porch into the early evening. This is what life's about. Good food, good friends, and all that those involve.
Sunday, I started off by going to the weekly flickr meetup at Progress Coffee, where I had a lemonade. This was followed up by a quick trip down to the HOPE Farmers Market, which was a bit empty due to the long weekend. I didn't get anything, but the produce they had there looked pretty good. Bunch of hippies - but of the East Austin variety, so they were 'funky' (in all senses of the word) and tattooed, but hippy in the heart. I walked around East Austin a bit more, taking pictures as I went, because I had an hour to burn before heading up to Hubert and Melissa's for another Memorial Day weekend BBQ.
Monday was even more relaxed. I cleaned up the house a bit, did dishes, ate a strawberry from the garden. I was going to swing by Zilker Park, but they're charging for parking on weekends, so I went down to Butler Park instead to watch the end of the CapTex Triathlon.
I've finally regimented my gym visits (to a solid three days a week), in the hopes that the structure will help. We'll see how that goes. I've been weighing in at about 198 the last few times, so maybe that's encouraging. Until next time.
A whole lotta festival, so little sleep
I haven't been this stimulated in months! To put it mildly, I'm still running off the energy from covering the film festival on Friday and Saturday, for no other reason than it's the first big physically and mentally demanding thing I've done in quite a while. I put up a bit about it on hsuboxphotography.com, so do pop on over there, and from there, you can go to the official gallery at the event here. This being the case, I've been going to sleep at around 2am, which is well, well, well past my bed time. This makes for useless Georges during the daytime, since I still wake up at around 8.
Especially bad because I still have classes on Mondays. From all this came a rather odd, peculiar dream. One of those that seemed real enough that you actually manage to remember it throughout the day. A bet an oneiromancer would have a good go at this one, but from what I can remember we were in a house in Richardson, though not Mom and Dad's house. The city was under imminent attack and/or danger by unknown baddies, so I had to hide Chloe and Tyler in the cellar (like I said, not Mom and Dad's house... and I've never actually been in a house with a cellar, so who knows where that came from). At this point, I also realize it was a dream, because the two of them DID manage to remain quiet - a notion so completely unrealistic as to raise a chuckle as I write this - possibly due to the fear of the situation. As I watched through a window, the enemy marched down the street past the house, and a random kid ran up to the window and squirted it with ketchup (or maybe Arby's sauce... it was darker than regular ketchup). For some reason, I got so angry and completely lost it. Completely mental. Seriously.
I ran up the stairs to street level, ran the kid down, tackled him, and drove his face into the pavement. Incidentally, I know this was Richardson, because this bit of sidewalk that I chased the kid down in is the side of the house at Concord and St John's. At this point, the kid is crying, and I'm yelling at him, really not caring if I had hurt him or not, and the scene shifts to the court room where one of my aunts is suddenly a magistrate, and I get sentenced to 3 weekends in some low-security volunteer/detention center for my actions. I feel betrayed by family, and wumpf, I wake up.
Eery, I know.
Maybe this is some psychosomatic window into some deeply hidden anger issues, or some insight on some other regressed whatsits.... or this was just a strange dream brought on by lack of sleep over the last couple of days.
I spent a lot of time today catching up on Doctor Who episodes I've missed, thanks to the lovely, fluffy splendor of Netflix, so maybe tonight's dream will do with aliens and cheesy special effects. I can only hope!
Another weekend in the books
I found myself in the midst of another, hark, busy weekend. What's going on here? Most extraordinary.
Vishnevskiy in the shootout
Saturday
As is my weekly habit now and in preparation for the rain we were expecting, I started Saturday off by mowing the lawn. I guess Grandpa and Dad getting their lawn so green has smitten me with envy, and so, I've found myself working really hard to coax my lawn back into shape. Plus, I really, really need to show up the across-the-street neighbors who have one of the worst lawns around. After getting cleaned up and eating a small lunch, I figured I would head up to Sandy's early for the hockey game that night.
On route, with Sandy still at her event and Nathan and Tyler at the park, I figured I would swing by the Lotus/Aston Martin/Bentley dealership. I've always wanted to see what it was like inside. First thing I noticed was that the place was huge. They park cars in there three or four deep, with plenty of space around them. I asked the salesman (or do they prefer the term 'associate' because it sounds higher class?) about the arrival date for the sexy new Lotus Evora that is supposed to come out, and I got the answer, along with an invitation to the Lotus Evora launch party in January. Pretty sweet deal right there. I guess not dressing like a slob has its advantages.
The hockey game was awesome. For Nathan's birthday, we got a block of seats, two rows behind the glass, for $10 a piece. A steal, bargain, and downright larceny, but I'll take it! I also had Sandy sneak in my 70-200mm telephoto lens (despite the media rep telling me I couldn't via email), and got some pretty good photos. The Stars lost to those Canadian Bulldogs, but it was still a very entertaining game. On top of that, Chloe and Tyler got some free pucks!
Sunday
I really wasn't planning to do much on Sunday, but got a text message about the Hill Country Rolling Sculpture Car Show at the Hill Country Galleria, and decided to huff it out there with my camera. There were some surprisingly nice cars at the show, with a bit of everything, from Scions to Ferraris, and Shelbys to Rossions. Here are my photos from that event. We were only out there for an hour and a half or so, but it was still fun.
Later that evening, I got another message about working on some Miata headlights, so I did that until 9:30. I've skipped over a lot of the details, but let's be honest, most of you readers of this blog - even those I don't know - probably don't find it terribly fascinating. Plus, you probably already read about it on my twitter. So there. Suffice to say, it was fairly busy, and a good time.
I'm thinking about heading to Dallas for a few days when Mom gets back on the 3rd. I have class on the 4th, so I might head up after class, weather-permitting. Until then, I still have a Wiccan New Year's Eve to celebrate. It's great that my costume is multi-functional in that it doubles as a not-costume.
A little sneezy, a little wheezy
Congress Ave.
I can't claim to have fallen prey to the infamous, notorious allergies that seem to afflict my family after years of living in Austin, but with the mold as high as it has been for the last few weeks, I'm starting to feel some affect. It doesn't help that I've actually done some yard work, and because of just the tiniest amount of rain we've received, means every step I take kicks up a copious amount of dust and grass-matter into the air. This makes for an itchy-eye'd, sneezy George. The neti pot does wash out the ever-satisfying mass of mucus, which I have a sick fascination for.
This weekend was fairly relaxed. I tried to go downtown to take some pictures of the buildings, but I only lasted an hour instead of the three I had planned. Even though it's only 90 at 10am, the concrete reflects it everywhere, so it feels ridiculously worse. The rest of the day was spent hiding from the heat and getting some stuff down around the house.
Sunday saw the consumption of Terri's Texas Donut from Round Rock Donuts. If you've not heard of this mutant donut, head on over to her blog to check it out. Imagine a donut the size of a birthday cake, and you'll begin to get an idea of what it's all about. It was good. Very good. Dangerously good. Sandy, Nathan, and Tyler also went to help defeat the monstrosity. Then, after some normal lunch, I had some hours to kill before needing to borrow Joe's Xterra to pick up Jason and Tommy from the airport. Their whirlwind tour of Europe is finally at an end. I am still jealous, though I may have taken a slightly different route. One day.
I need to stop by the library some time today to return one book, and renew another. Despite the local library being quite small, it has a few gems in there that will take me a while to read through. I'm also preparing for bills week, where most of my bills seem to like to pile up on me. I have rediscovered the joys of Bit Torrenting. I used to hate it because I couldn't ever find enough seeders, so downloads would take days and days. But, with Top Gear being as popular as it is, that hasn't been an issue. For the litigious types, I wouldn't have to download it, if they'd show the shows I'm downloading over here. True enough.
No fireworks this year, but all’s well
Fireworks from 2007 in Austin
I headed up to Dallas again this year for the Independence Day weekend (conveniently on a Saturday this year for the working folk). I figured I would leave around 11 on Thursday morning to drive around the lunch hour, and for the most part it worked, except the three times where the people working on the freeway decided to close two lanes, causing a bit of havoc. A stop in West for some kolaches was also required.
Upon arrival, it was pretty stinking hot, so there wasn't much to do until evening when I mowed the front and back yards with Dad's fancy electric mower. I'm impressed the thing held a charge for as long as it did, even after mowing both yards, it didn't really show any signs of letting up.
Friday saw a trip with Mom and Knotts to the Galleria for some walking/browsing/perusing/etc. I got me a few shirts. Then, more loafing until the evening when everyone comes over for yakkety-yakking, and Alice let loose the news that she's prego again. February is the target? Terri has competition for annual attention, hahaha.
Saturday, Independence Day, we decided just to have a swim and bbq. Burgers, tots, mom's cooking, really delicious stuff! Terri and Joe went to go watch fireworks at their friend's house, so I figured I would help Dad out more with the yard, since he wanted to put down some grass-feed, so my Independence Day evening was filled with yardwork, root beer float, and watching Casino Royale on USA network. Not a wholly bad way to go.
I drove back to Austin on Sunday morning, unpacked, and went to Home Depot for some light bulbs. That's it, really.
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