Merry Christmas

Grown-ups

We got a new rug (X-mas gift) and then K-twn's folks got us end tables.    Kristen thinks our living room looks like it's for grown ups. 

RIP - Don Van Vliet

A true musical revolutionary.........

RIP Mr Feller

The first famous person I ever remember seeing.   My grandfather took me to an Amarillo Gold Socks game and he was signing autographs before the first pitch.  I didn't really know who he was but I will always remember it.

Classic

So, Do you think he can fall down, while pretending not to 

 enjoy the happy ending he's provide.    

Top 5 of 2010

here they are so far:

1. Beach House - Teen Dream 

2.  Wolf Parade - Expo 86

3. Band of Horses - Infinite Arms

4.  The National - Tired Violet
5. Deerhunter -  Halcyon Digest

Honorable Mention

Tired Pony - The Place We Ran From
Midlake - The Courage of Others

XX
Broken Bells
Kings of Leon - Come Around Sundown

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Billy's BBQ at the Oasis - Austin, TX

Athens, Jerusalem, Cairo, Istanbul

Trip of a lifetime

God Bless Douglas Adams

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons. -Douglas Adams, writer, dramatist, and musician (1952-2001)

NEW SCAM..... or I got my first email from Mr Bernanke

from FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD reply-to null to date Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 3:53 AM subject CONTRACT FUND CREDIT FROM BANK FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD mailed-by wested.org

NEW YORK.

ATTENTION

CONTRACT FUND CREDIT FROM BANK FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD

We received an instructional letter to credit $10.5million to your account


We wish to let you know that all charges are waived for the success of this
contract fund to be credited into your account.

Your respond is required to enable us credit your account without any further
delay and you are also required to get back to us with the reconfirmation
of your banking particulars for we to know if what we have in file is correct and
to avoid crediting your funds to wrong account.

CONGRATULATION TO YOUR CONTRACT FUND.

Please be fast on this matter.

Thanks and God bless you.

Regards,

Ben S. Bernanke


Chairman Federal Reserve Bank New York.

The POUR

The digging continues

Treching and Sewer fun

Written by the wife:

I wanted to share with you guys what's happening in our neck of the woods. Poor Tuey is having to play plumber today! We had a major working weekend installing 3 french drains in the backyard with the help of the best friend ever, MV. We rented a trencher and moved tons of dirt and buried the flex pipe with sand and more dirt and then spread all the extra dirt around our dirt filled backyard...you get the point. It was dirty and sweaty and exhausting. We must be crazy to have picked the first weekend in August for such a task, but it was a necessary step before moving on to more fun things, like our patio, so we sucked it up and got it done. All told, we laid 124 feet of underground pipe.

Early in our trenching we ran into the previous owner's poor excuse for a french drain. It had been buried over the years and we couldn't fine where it daylighted so we figured we would just work around it. On down the line we ran into it again with the trencher. Dennis and Mark both commented that it was kind of weird that it was a different kind of pipe but since it had already made the corner to the downslope of the yard it was probably just whatever they had on hand and used it rather than buying more perforated pipe. 2 architects and one day laborer (that would be me) all came to the same conclusion. Cut through it and keep digging!

Fast forward to Monday after all the dirt was back in it's place for the most part and we are feeling pretty good about what we accomplished. We even managed to trim all the trees and drag them to the curb for the biannual brush collection. We are ready to move on now that we have our infrastructure in place. We even kind of hope it will rain, despite the ridiculous mess that will lead to with the dogs, to see how well everything drains out.

I come home from work and wash my face in our bathroom and the toilet starts gurgling. Weird, I think and then recall that I heard that sound this morning after I finished showering. Why would the toilet be bubbling? I yell for Dennis to come in there and complain about what I heard. Of course, it's not gurgling anymore so he makes a joke about me losing sleep at night over a noise that isn't really there and flushes the toilet. That's when things went south.

The toilet backs up, the floor drain in the laundry room overflows, and the tub is filling with water, too. 15 towels and 25 cuss words later we have things leveled off but no solution. Plunging won't work, drain snaking won't work, and Tuey has to leave to go to our neighborhood association meeting. He leaves and comes back in 3 minutes later with the realization. That wasn't the old french drain. That was our plumbing line. The yard is wet all over the area where we cut through the pipe. Lovely.

He spent about 2 hours digging the pipe up last night to give it time to dry overnight and is knee deep in it right about now trying to find the pipe, cut it smooth, and put a replacement piece in. To be followed by, of course, more dirt filling. On the human needs side of the equation, we are lucky that we have two other bathrooms that are on the original plumbing to the main line so we are still able to shower and use the facilities. Tuey leaped from bed to remind me that my excessive 7 AM dish washing was going to create mud for him to work in back there, but apart from that our water usage is wide open.

You fix one problem only to create another one. Typical for the do it yourself renovators that we are. Thank goodness he has the skills, stomach, and back to solve the problem. My husband the plumber. God love him.

Geiser on Dixon Street

5325 Sendero Hills Parkway - AGAVE

UPDATE.   Built in 2007, this project was published on July 25th, in the Austin American Statesman

This 1,525 sq. ft. home was designed in early 2006 as part of the Agave development in East Austin. This development was designed to be a sustainable community with Modern designs at affordable prices. This was created while I was working with KRDB. To learn more about this development and would like to know more goto AGAVE

Travel Well

Daniel Louis Schorr (1916 – 2010)



There are so few Great Ones remaining. 

“being poor, fat, Jewish, fatherless” had made him feel like an outsider, and that he had “achieved identity through my stories.”

"All news is an exaggeration of life. "

Fasinating

To those of you who still read this blog,   PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT & SHOUT OUT AND SAY HELLO.   I've forgotten who you are.   Also, if you've never emailed me but occasionally read, let me know who you are.    Don't make me track down your ISP through my domain tracker.


I do find this story riviting and terribly fasinating if only for the fact that I too, want a nice apartment on the West Side some day.

TAKE A LOOK

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Happy Bastille Day Motherfuckers!    Go find someone in the aristocracy and behead them.   Barring that you might consider looking at the DMV, a WWE event or Sarah Palin rally (same thing really).   Still no luck.   Ok, well then you might want to consider working more than 30 hours a week, having less than an average paid vacation days of 37 days (2nd highest in the world)  or working more than 1380 days (as opposed to the US 1777- a 9 week delta, 4 if you subtract the paid vacation days).   

But the fact of the matter is that none of that really matters.  

We are more alike than we are different.  We have MANY similar problems (emigration, trade, welfare, partisan BS) and the longer we exist, the more our identity will be challenged by the forces that act on our country. 

Good luck France.   We will all need it.

and then

Some days just suck.    No two ways about it. 

Sad Week

It's been raining for what seems like forever.    Luckily  I mowed the yard on the one night this week that it was dry.    Supposed to be clear tomorrow.    I hope so.   Almost 3" since the first of the month.  



I made the final payment for the honeymoon this morning.

I'm ready to move on with our lives.  

I wish I was busier (work-wise).   I could really use a good distraction.   

The plan

Not quite sure how the boat is supposed to plow through the Dardanelles overland but should be a hoot. 

Kitchen Back Splash & more Summer Harvest

Fannie Mae is killing PACE

I have been watching the PACE program and was waiting for Austin to pick up the program before using it to get a insulation, the solar hot water heater and maybe a 3 kW PV system.   But it looks as though the Federal lenders are killing the deal, stopping the job and hampering what I perceive as progress.

The first harvest of the HOME garden

why someone might not like soccer

End of the first day of Play.....

France 0 : Uruguay 0
Mexico 1 : South Africa 1

WOW.... THE DRAMA,  there's 180 minutes of our lives well never get back and are not completely wasted..... Sudden Death - jerks off's... watch a hockey game and pick up a few things....Like a stick to the jaw, perhaps.