Lab Flood

Warm weather, and the live oak leaves continue to fall. The Texas mountain laurels look and smell pretty. Today is Texas Independence Day, see: http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/us/texas-independence-day. The last couple days have been a little crazy. Yesterday, Kris flew from Dallas to Peoria to surprise her friend Regan for her birthday. Sounds like much fun is being had. She returns early next week. At about 4 am yesterday there was a fire in one of the chemistry labs at the UT-Austin. Nobody was hurt, thank God, but the lab with the fire was above the main Stevenson lab and student office space (including my work area - which was not as impacted as some). There is a lot of water damage (with tile fragments) to lab benches, but a lot of the really expensive equipment was spared. Today we were allowed in for a while to do some specialized cleanup, but companies are also hired to do more cleaning. We hope to regain full lab access next week.

American Coots

Here is picture of water birds we saw on Sunday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Coot). In other news, my father's company offered him a severance package today, so now he has retired rather suddenly. I'm a little jealous, being only about halfway through my employment arc (if you consider starting at 16 or 17). Well, my folks certainly earned their retirement and I hope they enjoy themselves.

Zilker Park Revisted

Today we visited Zilker Park again. We rode the train, climbed on a rock outcrop, flew kites (until I unbelievably wound up placing both in the same tree), and played disk golf (did not find much cacti in the rough, but it did us pause).

WeatherFest

Katie and I visited WeatherFest at the Bob Bullock Museum today. Kris stayed home to finish the book "Jurassic Park", which her friend made her read. Some of the stuff there (e.g. spotter training) would have really bored her, so the thing we did most there was visit a hands-on area put together by GirlStart (http://www.girlstart.org/). This included doing a pretend weather forecast, which was fun but challenging. I would not mind having some of the storm-chasing toys on my car. Other pix include Katie under one of the many pretty purple fragrant trees in the area - thanks to the power of the internet I found out they are Texas mountain laurels (http://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=SOSE3). Here is a pic of the moon, Venus, and Jupiter close in the sky.

The Two Towers

I thought I had posted a picture of the vultures that hunker down at night in the electrical tower near Walnut Creek and Metric Blvd. There are sometimes more than 80 of them. Interestingly, there are few that roost in the next tower over and none that nest in the nearby St. Albert the Great church steeple. Yesterday Kris found a 4-leaf clover; her friend found a couple of 5-leaf clovers. Today I'm pretty sure I saw redbud tree in bloom. Highs in the 60s today.

Warm Day

The weather was warm enough today (92 F) that the girls decided to go swimming. They reported that the water was quite cold. I had heard that the live oaks dropped leaves in late winter, and I noticed a couple trees turning yellowish near a UT bus stop.

Ash Wednesday

Today we went to Ash Wednesday sevices. Our church here had four services, and at least two were quite well attended. Our wily pastor did the whole Mass first, then did the sermon and then did the ashes at the end. I got the impression that he does this to get people to actually attend the whole Mass. He also pointed out that Sunday Masses were more important than Ash Wednesday. Today's temps got to 88; Thursday's high should be similar. After that temps will be more like the average for this time of year (60s).

Yesterday was Mardi Gras, and also Karen's and my 18.5 year anniversary. Kris was not feeling well, so we took Katie to a Chinese restaurant and then later went for a walk. Yesterday my parents also arrived safely in Green Bay from their trip to visit us. One last tidbit: yesterday morning I finished rereading 1 Kings on the bus ride in. As I was finishing, somebody got in the bus and started ranting loudly, obscenely, and racistly (?) about people going to hell. I thought the timing was interesting because 1 Kings has a lot to say about good and bad prophets.