Oh, my stars and garters!

Let's make sausage!

As part of my quest to constantly try new things in order to avoid acknowledging the terrifying vacancy that I imagine is at the center of every human life because there seems to be no real reason for any one of us to be here on this planet--just kidding, hahaha! ha.--I bought a meat grinder attachment for our mixer last week.

Eric and I then spent most of the weekend making sausage. First a basic breakfast sausage, which we left loose and found tasty, and then a much more exciting hot Italian sausage, which we made into links and found incredibly delicious. 

I hear the old saw about laws and sausage all the time in my line of work, and I can now tell you that watching legislation get made is the much more distasteful spectacle. I mean, sausage making is pretty gross, but in a very cool way, plus at the end you have sausage, which is great. When you make it yourself you have complete control over the ingredients and the cleanliness of your tools and work area, which is reassuring. The post-grinding cleanup freaks me out a little, though; how do you even begin to get things clean when almost every single thing in your kitchen is coated in raw pork? 

Pictures? Wanna see pictures?

Held up

The storm dropped about 3.5 inches at our house in a couple of hours. That wasn't nearly as much as other places around town--my sister's house got almost eight inches and water was lapping at her foundation--but enough that I felt the new beds were put to the test. 

I'd had visions of tons--literally* tons!--of granite washing out into the street and finding all the plants uprooted and crammed up against the back gate, but this was the only real damage.

It's a strip about two feet wide where water running down the driveway finds a spot to make a sharp turn down to the yard below. We'll put down some larger rocks and coarser, heavier gravel to give that water something to run through, then maybe top it off with some good old decomposed granite to make it look finished. No big deal.

Considering how much damage was done to other parts of the area, this is very small potatoes indeed.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback and nice words, on the blog and off. You guys are nice.

*I mean "literally" in the literal sense of the word. 

After! The end of the yard project.

Before

After

I finished thirteen straight days of yardwork yesterday. Holy shit, that was so much fun. It was also more physical labor than I've ever done in my life.

Tomorrow I go back to work, so today I treated my weary self to a classic Austin weekday off: sleep late, drink too much coffee, take a dip in Big Stacy pool, and eat a late lunch of enchiladas and avocado margaritas at Curra's.

Anyway, I think--I hope--it was worth the time, money, and vacation hours spent. I finally like my front yard now, and I'll like it a lot more once the plants start growing and filling in that expanse of decomposed granite.

Speaking of which, I'm hoping the big storm that's predicted for tomorrow dumps a ton of rain right over Lake Travis and gives us a more modest amount over here. The plants and granite are not settled yet, so I worry that too much rain could wash our hard work away.

A little about the plants: I tried to pick things that are either native or well adapted to the area and that are drought resistant but will also flourish with some rainfall. Most of what I planted I have grown before, so I know it's all okay with the conditions around our house.

One exception is the ocotillo, which my friend Katherine and I had to build a gravelly mound for so it can drain properly. They hate wet soil, and we are on the very eastern edge of where they will grow at all. They're not really suited for Austin's climate and soils, but I love them so much when we go out to West Texas that I really wanted to try one for my yard.

I was also originally going to go for a lusher look, not quite so desert-y, but we had so many nice agave pups and underappreciated cacti in the backyard that it would have been silly not to incorporate them. I'll see how everything does over the winter and fill in any gaps in the spring.

I bought most of the plants at Great Outdoors, which is my favorite all-purpose nursery in Austin: lovely and inspiring grounds, quality plants, nice people. (Natural Gardener would be a close contender if it weren't practically a day trip from my house.)

A plant list, for the curious:

Monterey Oak tree

Pride of Barbados (Some friends gave us seedlings. We like those people.)

Something that kind of looks like P of B but has larger leaves; I think it might be a candlebush but I don't remember. (From the same friends; they rock.)

Henry Duelberg sage (I like the backstory at this link.)

Pink skullcap

Silver ponyfoot

Wooly stemodia

Hot lips salvia

Barrel cactus

Spineless prickly pear cactus

Variegated Agave americana

A dark-green agave that I don't know the actual species of, but it's beautiful and sharp and grows aggressively so we gave it a corner with lots of room.

Ocotillo

Bulbine

Four-nerve daisy

And this weekend I spread some wildflower seeds in the sunny corner next to the sidewalk: bluebonnet, firewheel, and California poppy.

Well, damn, I guess that's it for the big yard project--except of course the real "after" picture won't be available until two or three years from now, when we see what plants made it and what plants weren't quite up to hanging out in our front yard.

Anyway, this was fun. Maybe I'll blog some more soon.

Frontal passage

Tree power! Yeah!

We got the oak in the ground today. I think it will look splendid there.

It doesn't look like we've done much else out there since the granite got here, but my back and limbs tell me differently. Mostly we've been moving heavy things around. Mostly granite and soil.

Yesterday I bought plants; tomorrow I will start putting them in the ground. Things will start coming together more quickly after that, or at least they'd better. Otherwise I may begin to get discouraged.

****

Since we moved in this house, I've done most of my gardening in the back yard, and when we go outside we invariably hang out on the back deck. So it's been really interesting to spend a whole week of workdays out front.

Our street is not especially busy, but it does link two of the larger thoroughfares in our neighborhood. It's also part of a bike route and hilly enough that serious cyclists use it for training, so there's a steady stream of activity all day.

I was encouraged by the number of pedestrians and bikes I saw cruising by all day, and I was discouraged by the number of people I watched slow wayyyy down when they saw our garage door open, then immediately speed back up once they saw me.*

I've talked to my next-door neighbor every day this week when I usually only see her every other Saturday or so, and today we made plans to hand out candy together on Halloween. I discovered that one of my friends drives by our house every day on the way home from work, so we made plans to have drinks some evening soon.

I observed that no one stops at the three-way stop sign in front of our house, ever. Well, save for the elderly lady who lives a few doors down, and I suspect that's just because she pauses there to light a cigarette.

We are now on waving terms with the UPS guy, and this afternoon a school bus driver paused in front of our house and opened the door to compliment us on our progress, which she'd been watching all week.

I don't know, it's just nice watching everyone go by. This shouldn't be news; I used to be a rather dedicated front-porch sitter. But now I don't smoke** and anyway, we don't really have a front porch here, just some narrow chairs we put on the driveway apron so it wouldn't look so forlorn.

Maybe we'll want to sit out there at least every once in a while once it's all spruced up. We'll find out in a few days, I guess.

*This happened at least three times a day, all in the late morning or early afternoon. I'm not sure if people are actively cruising for targets or just opportunists, but either way I now feel my let's-loop-around-the-block-and-just-make-sure compulsion about making sure the garage door is closed is not so irrational.

**Weird, now that I think about it I quit four years ago today. YES.

I am too tired to drink beer.

This is a very weird feeling for me. But I shoveled and dumped granite for six hours today, so it's not entirely unreasonable.

Tomorrow I'm giving my back a break. I'm going to the nursery to buy plants--does anyone know where to buy an ocotillo in Austin?--and I'm going to pull some agave pups for relocation. Maybe I'll assemble the bench I bought too. The fun part is about to start.

My wish was granite

The weekend was frustrating, slow, and punctuated by a lot of sneezing, but I feel so much better today now that my cold is waning and we have the decomposed granite in.

I've heard a few people say they think decomposed granite is a little overdone, and they may have a point. But if it is, I don't mind. As a mulch it looks nice, packs firmly, and drains well. Also once it's settled it's not nearly as attractive to cats as wood mulch, which at least on my street will ensure that your yard smells like a litterbox. I love the stuff.

I got this batch delivered from Geo Growers in Austin and would do so again.

If you are still curious about what we've been doing since the last update and would like the photographic blow-by-blow (which includes pictures of a cute dog, a handsome man, and a shiny dump truck), start clicking here.

Oh, and we still haven't planted the tree yet. It'll go where the blue tarp is now.

After that we will do a million other things, and then we will realize we have a million things more to do and do those. Then we will have to redo the first million things, and I'm guessing we will pass the rest of our lives in this fashion until we get old and die.

Sidelined

I have a cold. I stayed in bed until almost noon. Then I plotted out and halfheartedly dug part of the new path from the driveway to the back gate until Eric told me I should go inside and rest because I looked pale and weird and was walking like a Universal Monster.

For the rest of the afternoon I sat in bed and rearranged my Springfield in the Simpsons Tapped Out game in between bouts of dozing. (I am BoojooB on there if you play and want to add me.)

So not much gardening today, and it was so pretty out too, dammit. Tomorrow, I am sure, there will be more progress.

Oaky, okay.

Once the rosebush was gone, the corner it left vacant seemed like good spot for a tree.

 

Eric drove me down to the Great Outdoors this afternoon, and we picked up a Monterrey Oak. They grow fairly quickly, are drought tolerant, and have a really pretty shape. Once it's mature it will help shade the sidewalk in front of our house. I love it and will plant it tomorrow.

Poking along

This yard project is going to take a long time, primarily because I am not especially strong and need to take lots of breaks so I don't flame out by noon, but also because I get sidetracked too easily.

Today I pulled up many, many weeds and made some preliminary measurements for a path I want to cut through to the back gate. Then I dug up the rosebush, which I wasn't sure I was going to do until I was doing it. Then I was really doing it, hate-chopping the roots with a pick and heaving it across the yard in triumph when it finally came up.

That stupid thing. It was here when we bought the house and I thought, a rosebush! How nice! I fertilized it and pruned it and watered it and mulched it every year, and it never did a damn thing until this spring, when hundreds of tender, hopeful buds appeared. I was so excited. Then all but two blooms got powdery mildew or something and half the leaves fell off.

It's been sucking up precious water and expensive compost and giving nothing back except sitting around, dominating that corner and looking like absolute shit on a stick for six years. Today I got a big, gnarly thorn embedded in my arm while I was weeding around it, and that was it. I went to the shed and got the pick.

Digging up a plant that old was hard work, and when I finally finished I flopped back into the dirt for a moment. I had a nice rest for a few seconds before I realized I was sprawled on an ant pile. By the time I was done hopping around and picking ants off my clothes, I was completely wrecked and anyway it was almost time to go to my sister's birthday party at TopGolf.

You see why this is all going to take a while.

After shot of the rosebush corner. It doesn't even deserve a before shot. (Actually I just forgot, but seriously, that plant was such an asshole.)

Let's make a gigantic mess: Front yard edition

I'm taking time off work this month to landscape the front yard. I solarized the grass out front and will be doing a sort of lasagna-bed thing to plant some drought-tolerant shrubs and make our lawn a little smaller. A few people have asked me how to do that, so I thought this would be a fine place to lay it all out.

Here is the front yard in mid-August. It looks like the lawn is already dead, because Austin is a dry hell in the summer. But it's just dormant. Waiting, watching.

Especially the bermudagrass, which is almost impossible to kill. When you pull it out it grows back even more vigorously from the remnants you inevitably leave behind, like the splinters of Mickey Mouse's broom in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. If we didn't have the bermudagrass, I might have just thrown some cardboard down and dumped a bunch of mulch on it and been done months ago.

The best time to solarize is in the summer so you can get the soil good and hot and completely inhospitable to vegetative life. You start by cutting the lawn/grass/weeds as short as possible and raking up as much debris as you can. Then you water deeply. The idea is to get everything trying to grow and ready to absorb some heat just before you smother it.

After the water has soaked in, cover the area with clear plastic sheeting. (Some people use black plastic because it absorbs the sun, but much of what I read said you really want the sun beating through the plastic and onto the grass.)

I used this stuff. You could probably get away with clear painter's tarp if you were careful. The thinner plastic might even be better, so long as it doesn't tear.

Be sure to lay the plastic as tightly as possible against the ground, and try to seal the edges well so that very little air can escape.

Place some boards or bricks or something at intervals on the first layer so you have a few inches between that and the second layer of plastic, which you then put down and also seal as well as possible. (The second layer is optional, but the air in the space between layers helps it get extra hot.)

Then you have to be okay with your yard looking kind of dumb and ugly for at least a month to six weeks while the sun does its work. It helps that no one's yard looks good at the end of summer. 

After a few months, pull up your plastic and be amazed. Or sort of amazed. It worked pretty well, although I probably should have taken everything up before it got cool and wet. You can see the bermudagrass already trying to come back in patches, and the plastic was wet and muddy and smelled like both dog and cat pee.

I have since sprayed Round-Up on those tufts of grass. My gardening principles call for me to make a good faith effort to try the least toxic methods first. If those fail, I have few qualms about breaking out the poison, at least where I'm not growing food.

About a week after I put the plastic over the front strip, I decided the strip of weeds and eternally struggling palm trees next to the driveway would look nice if I made it into a bed too. But by then it was humid and mosquitoey and I only had an hour or so each day to work on it, so I did what any self-respecting woman would do and completely half assed everything.

I waited too long after cutting the grass, so it was all puffy and uneven. I had to cut the plastic to fit around the palms, and I did a terrible job of both cutting and sealing it. And then I only put down one layer because I decided in August it is better to sit inside and drink chilled vodka and cry than do anything outside, ever.

As you can see, my slapdash method didn't work at all. All I did was create a miniature greenhouse where weeds could grow, thrive, and multiply, probably giggling quietly all the while.

Luckily most of that is not bermudagrass, so it can be dug up or smothered with cardboard. WHO LAUGHS NOW?!?

So yeah, if you do this, do it right. Don't be lazy and sad like me.

Tomorrow I will dig up all the weeds I can, draw out the contours of the beds, and begin to install the metal edging. The weather will be perfect, and I can't wait.

I think I'm going to blog this whole process, so if you like long, dull descriptions about yard work, stick with me and I'll take you places. Really, really boring places.

Presidents' Day

Oh, my, is it Presidents' Day again? Time does fly. Please enjoy this wish from Miss Ida, my second-favorite dog.

Willa you?

You got your hugelkultur in my keyhole garden!

Trying to grow things in Texas can be heartbreaking. It's been hot and dry, dry, dry for much of the year lately. I was getting discouraged for a while, but this year I decided to try again, and try harder.

First, I bought two more rain barrels so I could store the water when it does rain. (They sat empty for three months, but we finally had a storm last month.)

Then Eric bought me a giant compost tumbler for Christmas, which was a very romantic gift in that it was exactly what I wanted.

It didn't fit under the tree, or really anywhere except the backyard, so for present-opening time Eric wrapped a tiny box with this card inside. Hooray!

I got to researching and ran across the concept of hugelkultur. Basically the idea is you build a raised garden bed on a base of rotted wood--if the wood is old enough it's able to soak up moisture like a sponge and release it back into the garden over time.

We happened to have a big, extremely rotten tree trunk that had made up a portion of the crummy old fence we replaced in the fall, plus the remnants of a youngish pecan tree we lost to the series of droughts. (Like I said, it's heartbreaking.)  That seemed like a good start for a tiny bed.

Soon Kristy mentioned the number of leaves she'd been raking and bagging from the many trees in her yard, so I offered to take them off her hands. She began saving them for me, and when this is done I'll use them to make compost for some other, as-yet-unplanned project.

Somewhere in all that, Lei-Leen sent me a link about keyhole gardening, which has been used to great effect here in Texas. The idea is that you have a round, built-up garden with a compost basket in the middle to toss your kitchen scraps in. You water the garden through the basket, pushing the moisture and nutrients below the soil's surface, which is supposed to reduce evaporation and encourage roots to grow deeply.

I had already started heaping up wood and leaves for a hugelkultur bed and was amassing extra kitchen scraps as we waited for the first batch of compost to cook, so I decided to make a hybrid of the two.

At first it looked like a complete shitty mess (especially compared to what it replaced). The white stuff is flour, which this blog taught me is a good way to sketch outlines in the yard (and also reassured me that it's fine to adapt these principles according to what you already have and can feasibly do).

Today we moved the original wood/leaf/hay/dirt pile forward to join the keyhole bed. Eric broke up the big tree trunk so it would fit in the circle, and we began to build the rock border.

We soaked it halfway through to get as much water into the base as possible.

It still looks kind of shitty and messy, but you can see where we're going with this. We'll slowly build up both the soil and the rock wall over the next six weeks or so until it's time to plant spring vegetables. Hopefully between the soaked wood and the center basket and the mulch I plan on spreading, I'll be able to grow even in a really dry spring.

Will this work? Hell, I don't know! I guess if it doesn't we can always throw some ollas into the mix and turn it into a drought-fighting collossus.

Or maybe it'll rain every day for three months and everything will turn to mush and rot. If that happens I will give up on gardening in Texas forever, secure in the knowledge I did everything I could with the hand I was dealt.

Lost pants update!

I lost a pair of jeans last year, and after all that time I still marveled that they had never turned up. I was truly mystified.

Last week I was trying to fix my dresser drawer and keep it from catching on the slides (cheap IKEA crap grumble grumble), so I yanked it out, and my long-lost jeans fell from where they'd been wedged onto the floor. They still fit. So I guess the moral of the story is never give up.

Actually, that's terrible advice; it's sometimes best to cut your losses, walk away, and never look back!

Ok, then, the moral of the story really is if you can't find an article of clothing anywhere and you only wore it like twice and know for a fact you never took it off outside your house, check behind your dresser drawers. (I also found three socks and a camisole.)

Tonight's drink: Cherry Lemontrees!

They are pretty. And delicious!

Ok:

Infuse vodka with frozen cherries. (Eric is on a liquor-infusion kick right now. We need to free up a few bottles so he can try a batch with this year's habanero peppers.)

Make Meyer lemon simple syrup: Simmer and stir one part sugar and one part water with the zest of a lemon or three until the sugar is completely dissolved. Let it cool, then strain out the zest. (Regular lemon simple syrup will be ok too if Meyers aren't in season.)

Fill a big glass with ice.

Pour 2 oz. cherry vodka over the ice.

Pour 1 oz. simple syrup into the glass.

Squeeze half a regular lemon over that.

Top with fizzy water. (We like Topo Chico.)

Drink way too fast and make another.

It's pretty good with regular or raspberry vodka too. It would probably also be good with bourbon, but I haven't tried that.

If you're not feeling boozy, you can leave the vodka out altogether and have a nice kinda-fancy lemonade.

Oh, hey, my glass is getting low. See you later.

With a whimper

I have four and a half days left of vacation, and I am not making any plans for them. I would like to read the rest of Moby Dick. I would like to get my new compost bin set up and started. I would like to plan my next mosaic project (you can see the latest one here; it was a present for Eric's mom and a pleasure to make). I would like to think about what all I want to do next year and how I can do it. I would like to take some walks and naps.

Actually, hold up, that seems like way too many things already. Really if I can just finish that damn whale book by January 2, I'll be satisfied.

Things to do in Austin that are cool

I just finished my beginning improv class. I didn't uncover any hidden comedic talents or anything, but that's okay. It was good, hard work and a lot of fun. The class was eight two-hour sessions and culminates with a 20-minute set in front of an audience.

I wasn't going to tell anyone at all about it. Come on, it's a beginning improv class performance. The potential for embarrassment is pretty damn extreme. But one of the reasons I took this class was to try to shake this pointless and inconvenient self consciousness that's been dogging me throughout my adulthood. And it would be nice to see some friendly faces in the audience. So I'm telling everyone:

Wednesday, December 12, at 8 p.m.

The New Movement Theater

616 Lavaca Street

$5

My class, which is full of interesting, funny people, is opening for this act, which I have not seen but I'm sure is great. 

It might be hilarious! It will almost certainly be awkward! You should go! 

OK!

Now. I must pivot to the topic of whooping cranes. Whooping cranes, which are rare, huge, beautiful, and amazing, tend to winter on the coast around Aransas Bay. That's about a four-hour drive from Austin, but you can take a whooping crane boat tour and enjoy low hotel rates and walk on empty beaches and eat fresh oysters and all that great winter beachy kind of stuff. It's well worth the trip. But if you don't have time for that, this year there are a few whooping crane families that are hanging out at Granger Lake, about 30 miles east of Georgetown and an hour from Austin.

I read this article about them in the Statesman on Sunday afternoon, and twenty minutes later we were in the car heading north. Eric, who loves all creatures and giant birds best of all, had never seen a whooping crane in person.

We didn't get any pictures. The birds were either too far or too fast for that. But they are definitely hanging out around the lake.

We took the (lovely, largely empty) back roads from east Austin to Granger Dam, then parked at Friendship Park. The boat ramp was a good place to watch from, and we saw a group of whoopers in the distance from the swimming beach. You can't get very close, so definitely bring good binoculars or a camera with a zoom lens. (Our binoculars kind of suck, but a nice man there let us look through his scope.) Also, I'm not sure if they are spending the whole winter there like they did last year or just taking a break, so maybe look online to make sure before you head out. 

So, yeah. Some things to consider if you don't already have enough to do this month.

The chicken

Sunday night I bought a whole chicken at Central Market and roasted it. Eric made a really nice gravy from the pan drippings; it tasted fancy and delicious.

Monday we had leftover chicken and gravy and also chicken sandwiches.

Tuesday we made enchiladas verdes with half the leftover chicken and saved the rest. I put the carcass in with vegetables to boil for stock.

We both tended the stock all Tuesday night and through Wednesday; last night I strained and finished it and set aside some of the spent meat and fat for cat and dog treats.

Tonight I made tortilla soup with the stock and the rest of the leftover chicken. We will have tortilla soup for lunch and probably dinner tomorrow. We will divide up the rest of the stock and freeze it for later.

I am not yet tired of chicken. But I am really, really fed up with being in the kitchen, so much so that I would as soon chop the place up with an axe as spend one more second in there.

Two adults got about six good meals each from one chicken, plus stock for future cooking. That seems like a pretty good deal, plus it was fun (until it wasn't). It was also a lot of damn work. I'm glad we managed to use the whole chicken and the price of an organic bird seems much less insane when it can feed our little household so well for a week.

Still, I would like to go out to eat a lot this weekend.

Mild white vapors

"How now," he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, "this smoking no longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring,—aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I'll smoke no more—"

Seems fitting to have reached this passage on the third anniversary of quitting smoking. But that's old news. New news: I started reading Moby Dick again for the first time since 11th grade English, when I resentfully skimmed it just enough to pass the reading quizzes.

It's awesome. Really.

It's fairly slow going, even with the help of an online annotation, but the chapters are short and holy shit, the language and the character descriptions and the scope of the thing make it so fun to read. I am indignant that no one ever told me how fun, nor how funny, at least in parts:

"Landlord," said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snow storm,—"landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories, tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards the man who you design for my bedfellow—a sort of connexion, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the night with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution."

"Wall," said the landlord, fetching a long breath, "that's a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but one, and that one he's trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow's Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin' human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goin' out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions."

This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me—but at the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out a Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of dead idolators?

"Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man."

"He pays reg'lar," was the rejoinder.

Come on, that's pretty damn funny.

On the other hand, I am currently staring down the barrel of the infamous "Cetology" chapter. You know: whales, whales, sperm whales, killer whales, doofus whales, goddamn whales; big whales, little whales, whales whales whales, for like fifteen fucking pages. I reserve the right to change my mind about this whole endeavor after that.

Grout about

Hey, I tiled a table! 

And then I grouted it!

I gave it to Eric, who in theory will use it to rest his tongs and plates while grilling and smoking delicious food for us to eat. 

The light in the second picture is better so it's not really a fair comparison, but the grout really does make a huge difference. 

I see a lot of little things I wish I'd done differently, but overall, I'm happy. This was the product of the second mosaic class I took at Laguna Gloria. (They offer a ton of different classes there. If you live in Austin and want to try something new you could do a hell of a lot worse.)

I, uh, also seem to have signed up for an improv class at the New Movement Theater. I have some real trepidation about this, but it would be really, really nice if I could feel comfortable getting up in front of people again. Anyway, the people there seem very nice. And they had a Groupon. 

Oh, and I am still playing the trombone. Badly. 

Now I have to leave work and get ready to go to Port Aransas for a few days. Driving! Swimming! Beer! Grilling! Watching the dog go bananas in the surf! It's going to be terrific. 

Do you like art? And artichoke dip?

Then you should probably come to this on Saturday!

7 p.m. at End of an Ear record store, 2209 South First Street in Austin.

Free beer, too; did I mention that?

Hope to see you!

Probably secretly my fault.

Willa is very good on car rides.

You know we've spent a lot of time trying to get Willa to calm down, sit down, be cool. At two years old, she is almost completely mature and is pretty well behaved--she doesn't bark very much or chew, bite, or beg at all--but she simply cannot control her exuberance when she makes her greetings. She turns into a panting brown supernova of excitement when she sees any dog, cat, or human, stranger or no. It's frankly kind of frightening if you're not expecting it, so with the help of our friends and neighbors, we keep working with her, hoping she'll calm down with time and practice.

The flip side is that here's how I wake up most mornings these days: A second after the dog wakes up and opens her eyes, they go wide with surprise--I guess even though she's been sleeping at my feet all night, she hasn't actually seen me in almost eight hours. Her tail starts thumping and she rapturously wiggles across the bed to try to lick my face off. I cover my head with my arm and fend her off with pillows and think fuck it, dog, don't ever change. 

Brainstorm

Hi! I am trying to think of food and drinks that start with "art." Like artichoke dip! Or artesian water. Or whatever!

You seem smart; can you help me? 

The story of the good Tuesday

Took the day off from work. Willa and I went for a long walk and then I drank coffee until I no longer felt foggy. After that I put the laptop away and got to work. I cut, printed, and colored two prints, framed those plus one more I'd had done for a while, and typed up a bunch of title tags. I was both amazed and a little appalled at how much I was able to get done simply by staying off the internet and working under a deadline.

In the late afternoon Eric drove us down to End of an Ear, where we met Dan and hung a bunch of art on the wall there. The hanging went quickly and smoothly and although I have a slight bias I do think it all looks pretty good up there; we've got a good assortment of photos, relief prints, and paintings. If you live in Austin that'll all be up through the end of September, plus we're having a closing party on the 29th. More on that later.

After hanging everything we all tried to eat at the new ramen place during its soft opening, but it was packed and they are still working out the kinks, so we went to Swad instead and gorged on vegetarian Indian food. It was our first time there so we didn't know just how much food we were ordering until it started coming out, plate after plate; before long our four-person table was completely covered with dishes. It was a little embarrassing, but everything was really delicious and we made a pretty big dent.

After that we had a couple beers at Black Star Coop with a friend and then headed home.

Also today I got to pet two new dogs, a sweet old guy who kept nudging my legs with his very cold nose at the record store and a kinda sickly but happy new rescue mutt. His owner was taking him around the bar patio to get pets from everyone so he could get socialized and learn to be cool in public.

So yeah, it was a pretty nice Tuesday.

Uneventful summer punctuation

One story is that I got an honorable mention in the Austin Art Boards competition.

It's a cool project--Reagan Advertising agreed to work with the Austin Visual Arts Association to display art on its billboards when they aren't being leased to paying customers. So instead of some stupid "DO BILLBOARDS WORK???? JUST DID!!!!!!" filler ad, motorists get to drive past giant works by local artists.

Oh, man, I wanted to get this up on a billboard SO BAD. If I got to drive past this on I-35 on my way home from work for a week I would be the happiest woman alive. But there were lots of entires, so even being in the top 30-odd is still pretty good, right?

I will just have to keep entering some improved variation of this until I: (a) win; (b) read with sadness about the discontinuation of the Austin Art Boards contest; or (c) die.

Anyway, check out the winners because they are pretty great (or, if you live in Austin, just wait until you see them in the wild). Dan entered a photo too and is going to enter every year until the above conditions are met as well.

The other story is that I bought a kayak. We were driving back from Windy Point last month behind someone with a shitty little boat in the back of her pickup, and I realized I had always kind of wanted a shitty little boat too.

After some research, a quick trip around Lady Bird Lake* on a rented kayak, and some advice from a friend whose boyfriend makes great use of his inflatable boat, I settled on a not-so-shitty but fairly little inflatable kayak.

It was delivered last night, so I took today off to test it out. We took it to Lake Walter E. Long** and had a fine time paddling from one shore to the other. It's a little hard to control because it's higher and lighter than a regular kayak, but by the time we turned back Eric and I had figured out a rowing rhythm to keep us from yawing too much.

Sea Eagle! Caw! Caw!

I had so much fun today. I want to launch it everywhere.

*Town Lake

**Decker Lake. And really, do we have to rename every damn thing in Austin? It's not like it was all named after some Joe Paterno-like figure before.

Boy, am I a dork.

Why am I a dork this time? I am a dork because I wrote a whole post about naked mole rats and neglected to mention that I bought this splendid hand-colored linoleum print earlier this year:

It's by Margie Crisp, a Central Texas artist whose lino cuts of nature scenes blow me away.

I saw this print for sale at Slugfest on the EAST Austin Studio Tour* about five years ago and wanted it so badly but didn't have the scratch for it at the time. Earlier this year I realized I was still kicking myself for not getting it so I e-mailed her this year and hey! She still had it and kindly sold it to me. Check her stuff out.

*Isn't "EAST Austin Studio Tour" a little like "ATM machine"?

Rubber naked mole rat quest, eight years later

Hey, remember the Great Rubber Naked Mole Rat Search of Aught-Four? (Hey, remember when I was really engaged with this blog?) Over the years I have gotten many, many e-mails asking me to duplicate my efforts and find the writer their own replacement. I always gently decline but promise to keep an eye out.

I also got a great e-mail yesterday, which I am posting with permission of the sender because it's touching and funny:

Hi. I recently stumbled across the blog that you made years ago about trying to find the rubber naked mole rat replica, and I thought I should tell you my story, if 7 years later this email still reaches you. My name is Kelsey, and I got one of the rubber naked mole rats from the San Diego Zoo when I was approximately 11 years old, going into the 5th grade. I was moved in the 5th and 6th grade to a very tiny discriminating town in Pennsylvania, and I did not make friends. One day we had the assignment to write a book about an animal, and I brought in the naked mole rat, which I had named Pinky. Out of a joke I made Pinky answer a question for me, and from there that spiraled into the naked mole rat being my best friend for like a year and a half. Yup... I was that kid. I made Pinky talk, took her camping with me, took her in my pocket everywhere.... needless to say I didn't actually make any friends until I moved again...

I kept her for a few years after that commemorably awkward phase of my adolescence ended, but eventually in a fit of teenage remorse threw it away. At the age of 20 I actually kind of regret this now. While talking to a rubber toy at the age of 12 does not seem cute in the immediate retrospect, at this point in my life I'm more amused than anything else and I have a girlfriend who thinks it's the most adorable awkward phase ever. I was looking through the internet to buy another one, and I stumbled across your blog. I wanted to know if you ever got any other leads about getting one, it would be greatly appreciated. If not, I hope the story made you smile, and I'm glad you had success all those years ago on your quest.

Thanks, Kelsey! I promised her and I promise you, if I ever see those damn things again I am buying out the entire stock and sending a rubber naked mole rat to anyone who ever asked me about them.

I still have mine, by the way. He's doing fine. He lives on my bookshelf at work, and I love him as much as ever.

Freedom of choice

In ancient Rome there was a poem about a dog who found 18 bones.

She picked up one.

She licked another.

She went in circles.

'Til she dropped dead!

The dog goes through a lot of chew toys. Nothing in the world is better than a brand-new bone or squeaky toy, but the novelty wears off quickly. We've found if we hide the corpses of the old ones for a few weeks and bring them out again we can rekindle a little bit of interest.

Never thought to take them all out at once, though. That was pretty exciting for our little pal.

Also, why is Devo so good?

Yard of Glory

I do enjoy a little Sousa this time of year. This is in Austin over by Northwest Pool on Daugherty Street; you kind of can't miss it.

June 2012

A friend was talking recently about how her life is going really well lately, but superstition made her reluctant to admit it. I can understand not wanting to tempt fate, and no one wants to crow about that kind of stuff. Still, I think when you're happy you should enjoy the shit out of it if you can; lousy times will come again eventually no matter what.

So I'll say it, I've been having a pretty great summer so far. Working, swimming, drawing, exercising, taking naps. Poking at a mosaic project. Spending time with family, friends, and pets. Eating lots of good food and drinking moderate amounts of delicious beer. Learning the trombone (although I seem to have stumbled up to a very low and long plateau on that particular project; I would feel horrible for my neighbors, but you know what, they host drum circles so we're even). 

I should try to write more, though. I think I will write more soon.

Can you guess which one is mine?

Hey, I've got four prints in a group show that's opening this weekend, and Dan's got some photos up in there too. 

The opening reception is tomorrow (Friday, June 22) at Gallery Black Lagoon (4301A Guadalupe Street) from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Check it out if you like art and free beer and vodka.

(Actually, I'm not sure why you're reading this right now if you don't like art and free beer and vodka.) 

Ok, then! Hope to see you. 

Switcheroo

Father's Day Jamboree

Happy Father's Day, everyone!

(In the interest of preserving my pride, what there is of it, I'd like to point out that my dad has been playing banjo for 49 years; I've been playing trombone for three weeks.)

Lady failure.

How to spend your day off:

Trains and toilets, and the quiet end of a great trip.

Where were we? Leaving Nara. Leaving Nara on a bullet train.

After enjoying the turtle pond, we took the Kintetsu rail line to Kyoto Station, bought two tickets for a super express Nozomi train to Tokyo, and were on our way. 

A friend on Twitter asked for some pictures and video of the experience for her son, who is a big train fan. I was more than happy to help:

There was a rather good looking conductor at Kyoto Station.

I took video of a bullet train (not ours, obviously) leaving Kyoto Station. 

Our supercool train approaches the platform to whisk us away to the future.

One of the nicest things about traveling in Japan is that refreshment is never far away. We settled into our spacious seats with the snacks I bought on the station platform...

and watched the Japanese countryside warp by at 165 miles an hour.

We spent a little over two hours on that train, and I loved every minute. Except the minute when I had to wake the guy in the aisle seat so I could use the bathroom and then clumsily tripped over his briefcase on my way out. I didn't love that minute very much at all.

But other than that, it was great. I wished I could immediately ride the shinkansen back to Kyoto and then to Tokyo again. 

Instead we checked into a nice hotel with an even nicer view.

I'd wanted to cram some more Tokyo fun into our last night, but the cold I'd been ignoring for three days would no longer be denied. We ate dinner at a nondescript restaurant close by, and I planted my aching head on a pile of fluffy pillows and looked out the window, thinking about everything we'd seen in the past few weeks and resting in anticipation of the long trip back to Austin.  

Oh, we also used the fancy remote-control toilet in our hotel kind of a lot. I finally figured out the massage feature, and it's just...well, never mind. Although the toilet did make a lot of beeping noises, which made the experience slightly less soothing.*

Not all toilets in Japan** are that fancy. In public restrooms, it's a crapshoot: will you get a basic Western toilet? Or the slightly fancier version of the Toto Washlet, with a washing nozzle and a speaker that emits a musical flushing sound to mask your noises? 

Or will you open the stall door to find nothing but a pole and a hole, and, if you're lucky, a roll of toilet paper? 

Apparently some people have problems figuring those out. In case you were wondering, I had no such confusion and got the hang of them pretty quickly. (There was a lot of beer around for the cherry blossom festivities, so I had ample opportunity to practice.)

That's about all I have to say about toilets, and that also pretty much brings us to the end of our trip to Japan.

In closing, here is a picture of a cherry tree losing its blossoms on the grounds of Sanjusangendo in Kyoto. I can scarcely believe we were anywhere so far away and so beautiful just a couple of weeks ago. 

*I almost forgot. You should never play around with the air drying function until you are completely done with your business. Trust me. No reason!

**Sometimes I really love Wikipedia.

Nara way

I got bit in the butt by the deer of Nara.

They are considered sacred and have the run of the town. Vendors sell deer cookies so people can feed the deer.

Those people should be very, very careful, is all I'm saying. They will stop at nothing to get those cookies, including nipping yours truly in the ass. 

Deer-filled Nara, which served as Japan's capital in the 700s, is walkable, charming, and serene. It has a turtle pond.

We toured Tōdai-ji Temple and saw its great Buddha.

For scale, you could fit your head inside one of its nostrils.

After getting molested by deer and seeing the temple, we walked up to the highest point we could find, looked out over the city, ate some rice balls and fish, admired the view some more, and then walked back down.

By the time we got to the bottom it was late afternoon and a gusty breeze had kicked up, blowing the cherry blossom petals to the ground in masses. Little girls squealed and chased them as they spun and settled into drifts. Adults tried to capture it all with their cameras.

The petal blizzards were pretty but also meant the blooms, already fading, would be gone very soon.

The deer just ate them.

Nara was the last real day of our vacation--the rest would be devoted to travel and logistics. I doubt we could have chosen a lovelier place in which to say good-bye to Japan and relax before the long trip home.

Kyoto: Looking at flowers; eating bugs

If I have any regrets about this trip, it's that we didn't spend one more day in Kyoto. The cherry trees were at their peak, the people are a little warmer and more sociable than in Tokyo (and seem to speak more nuanced English too), the food is meticulously prepared and delicious, and it's just a beautiful city, maybe the prettiest I've seen.

They call the cherry blossoms sakura and the act of enjoying the sakura hanami, and so we hanami-ed the shit out of all that sakura.

We walked a lot, along Philosopher's Path, which was lined with trees, and in Maruyama Park, where they lit up the trees at night so people could have picnic dinners beneath them.

We ate a lot too. There were dozens of food vendors in the park, so we had fried chicken, octopus balls, steak-on-a-stick, and ice cream.

We also ate at a 547-year-old noodle shop that provided the soba noodles for the Imperial Family when Kyoto was the capital of Japan. The broth was so good; it had the richness and tang that I love in any food, and it was finished with a sliver of yuzu peel, a fragrant citrus that is a lot like a Meyer lemon. I am going to crave that soup for a long time, I can tell already.

The most memorable meal of the the whole trip--maybe ever--was at Okariba, an izakaya joint in north Kyoto that's owned and run by a game hunter. We'd read he served what he bagged, and since the menu was in Japanese we just indicated that we were hungry and thirsty and left the rest up to him. He did not disappoint, bringing us boar on skewers, bear jerky, rare venison, smoked goose, dry sake, sweet plum wine, snake liquor, and liquor infused with terrifying Japanese hornets. Then he asked if we wanted the house specialty. This turned out to be candied locusts and bee larvae, served with a toasted rice ball for dessert.

The bee larvae was a little squashy for my taste, and the locusts were a tad...pointy, but everything else was delicious. We chatted with the owner a little between courses; he was funny and friendly, and like everyone else, he was excited about the cherry blossoms. He even gave us a little bottle of plum wine for the road.

It was delicious; it was fun. We marched happily back to the train station and were so distracted by the fun deliciousness that we took a line going further out of town instead of inbound and had to figure out our way back with a half-hour left of daily train service to spare. Stupidity! Alcohol! Adventure!

Eric has some pictures of the meal here.

We toured a beautiful, freaky, and very moving Buddhist temple and a slightly boring castle. We saw a pair of geishas walking to work in the entertainment district and a whole passel more arriving by taxi. We drank beer and poked through shops and visited the modern art museum because it was just right there.

But mostly we just walked around Kyoto, looked at flowers, and stuffed our faces. Maybe it was best we left when we did. Two days of that was fantastic; three days might have ruined us forever.

Oh, kin, Okinawa!

We left Tokyo last Friday for a five-day visit with Eric's sister and her family.

The nephews are at that good age where they are old enough to get your jokes.

Although not so old that they think your jokes are lame.

We screwed around on a number of beaches.

 

And investigated tidal pools as amazing as any aquarium.

My sister-in-law and I got great pedicures. (How the hell do they do that?)

I don't know; Okinawa is an island of many mysteries.

It was a really good visit, and it was hard to say good-bye yesterday. We're in Kyoto now. It only took us three hours to get here, but it seems like a world away already.

Light and...Light!

Cherry blossoms, or sakura, in Ueno Park. Sakura's a very big deal in Japan, and festivities were largely canceled this time last year because the nation was mourning the victims of the earthquake and tsunami. Everyone we talked to said this year was going to be even more meaningful as a result.

I can't speak to that, but on our last day in Tokyo we walked along a path where all the trees were very nearly in full bloom, and everyone looked so damn happy, picnicking, strolling, taking pictures, drinking beer. We ate takeout sushi and takoyaki under a cherry tree and rented an excellently shitty swan-shaped paddle boat on the park's main pond.

Our Japanese lessons were actually very useful that afternoon. We were able to shout "abunai!" (look out!) just before a boat collision and "gomenasai!" (sorry!) after one.

After we turned in the swan boat, we took the subway over to Jingu Stadium for a good old-fashioned Japanese baseball game. You can BYO into the stadium, so we bought beer and bento boxes from the vendors that line the sidewalk on the way to the stadium. Of course they sold food inside too, more bentos and ice cream, and there were girls with keg backpacks selling draft beer and guys with little portable stands offering mixed drinks. I find these practices extremely awesome.

We'd intended to sit on the Yakult Swallows side and root for the home team--and the underdog--but we screwed up and ended up sitting with the Hanshin Tigers fans. That was ok, though. Tiger fans were a little more passionate, and since they won 3-0 we got to see everyone go nuts, clicking their click sticks and high-fiving every single person within reach when they scored runs, kind of like how Catholics shake hands during the sign of peace. Good stuff.

That about finished up Tokyo for us, although we'll spend one more night there before we fly home next week. Tokyo is a fantastic city to visit. It's vast, clean, and safe, and it varies so much from neighborhood to neighborhood that it's almost like visiting another town entirely every time you emerge from the subway. Which is comprehensive, intuitive, and fun as hell to ride. We did learn we should figure out our precise destinations ahead of time after some rather pissy half-hours spent lost here and there. Still, for a city that large--and largely without street names--it's remarkably easy to navigate.

Now we're visiting family on a Marine base in Okinawa, where the weather and the vibe are much warmer. No cherry blossoms here, but there are beautiful beaches, lots of hibiscus, and, of course, our people. More on all that in a few days, and then on to Kyoto!