Strawberry Picking

On Sunday we drove to Marble Falls to pick strawberries.  In Peoria we usually do this around Father's Day weekend, so it's quite a bit different here.  On the way through the hill country we saw lots of wildflowers from the recent warmth and rain - possibly some of the best wildflower groupings that I have ever seen.  We saw lots of people pulled over along the roads taking pictures (and we took pix, too).


We also went to see Lake Buchanan (pronounced "buck-cannon").  It is a large reservoir on the Colorado River far upstream of Austin.  Like Lake Travis, the closer reservoir, the level dropped a lot during the drought, but has risen a bit with the recent rains.  (By the way, Austin's drought level has now improved to "abnormally dry".)  Anyway, Lake Buchanan is located in a granite bedrock countryside and instead of seeing sandy beaches they were made of pulverized granite - kind of like the pathway in front of our apartment.
On the bus ride home today a grizzled, older gentleman dropped a few coins. I helped him retrieve them, and in a gesture of friendliness he offered "Want weed?" I politely declined the unlit cigarette, but I wish I could have seen the look on my own face.

Houston Zoo

Kristine's choir had a music competition in Houston yesterday (they did well). The site was near Rice University, which has lots of really nice oak trees on and near the campus (like on this tree-line street). Afterward, we went to the Houston Zoo.  It was quite warm and crowded and we were pretty tired, but we saw some cool animals.  This is the first time any of us recall seeing a red panda's face before - very, very cute animal!

Walnut Creek in the spring

Visited Walnut Creek Metro Park (the main part today). Saw lots of dogs and bicycles on the trails. Mostly found Inoceramus clam fossils - some large. It is amazing how different the woods look with all the green plant undergrowth - makes it hard to find the cacti (apparently their new growth emerges spines-first?).

St.Patrick's Day

Katie and I took a walk in the neighborhood today and found 23 different kinds of wildflowers/flowering weeds. In the afternoon, the girls and I took a short, cold dip in the pool. Tonight Karen and I played glow golf.

Galveston Island

Last Satuday through Tuesday, we spent time at a beach house on the west end of Galveston Island. The nice house was rented by our Peoria friends the Blands. We all had fun hanging out together, especially at the beach. The weather was often rainy or overcast, but it minimized the sunburn! We saw various sea creatures, including lots of shells and about four kinds of jellyfish. We also saw a number of Portugese Men of War (one stung a child on the beach). On the way out of town on Tuesday we stopped by the seawall and rode a four-wheeled, four-person bicycle.

Ides of March

Today I went to lunch with the family just south of campus and then we wandered down to Sixth Street to walk around to get just the teeny-tiniest taste of South by Southwest. Lots of people to watch. The music we did hear did not impress us. (Brought to mind a conversation about quantity vs. quality that I had with my sister yesterday. What else could I expect for 1 pm on a Thursday?). We stopped at the Dell tent and got some T-shirts and at the convention center (to use the bathroom). The wildflower pictures were shot in the field across the street from the apartment complex. The warm wet winter has weakened the drought a bit and might make this a good year for wildflowers.

Tina Visit

My sister is in Austin for SXSW and we were able to spend an enjoyable afternoon with her. We took her to the original Salt Lick (in Driftwood), Mount Bonnell, an Amy's Ice Cream, and our apartment.

Kids Events

Both girls had events tonight. Katie was a gymnast (in purple) at her Kindergarten circus and Kris sang at a concert (left end of middle row).

Kris Returns

On Monday morning I helped Karen feed the animals at Pioneer Farm because Kris was still out of town. Tuesday evening we drove up to Dallas to pick up Kris from the airport - she had a great time in Peoria. We saw Best Buy vending machine at the airport. Yesterday I went home early with some sort of stomach bug and am mending today at home. I gues the timing on that could have been worse - the flood-damaged chem lab is taking longer to fix than initially thought so I have not been able to do much besides paperwork this week. We got word that the lab equipment will be moved to a temporary space. The rain has begun arriving, and we anticipate getting a couple inches in the next couple days.

Kites and Bluebonnets

Today was the Zilker Park Kite Festival (http://www.kvue.com/news/Thousands-attend-84th-annual-Kite-Festival--141376073.html), but we did not want to fight the crowds, especially with Katie having a cold. However, this afternoon we took a couple of kites to a field near our apartment complex and tried to get them into the air. The winds were erratic and we had work to keep them flying. Near Katie in the picture you might be able to make out some bluebonnets (Texas state flower). I have been looking foward to seeing the flowers this spring and I had heard that people were starting to see them early (lots of stuff is opening early this spring after an unusually warm and wet winter). What I did not expect was to see some opening up in the aforementioned field. I want to find a place just carpeted with them, but this is a good start. We took the training wheels off of Katie's bike, but it will be some time before we get pictures of success with that. Saw Venus, Jupiter, the Moon, and Mars making a big line across the sky tonight - kind of neat to see.

Explore UT

Today was Explore UT, billed as the largest open house in Texas, and from what we saw, we can believe it. So many areas/departments all across the UT campus were open to visitors from the local and not so local community - Karen saw a bus from Corpus Christi. There is pretty much no way to see it all. Karen and Katie took a cross-campus exploration while I worked a table with a couple demos for 4.5 hours. The demos, developed over the past months here, went fine, but the location was not that well advertised and I saw only about 150 people (a better advertised spot located outside the building ran out of their 800 demos early). It was probably just as well since I did not feel that well in the morning. I got lunch and a T-shirt out of it, too. If you look closely at the fountain statue you can see steam coming from the lead horse's nostrils. In the evening we went to church just off-campus and then had some yummy pizza at the Mellow Mushroom.