And How Was Your Thanksgiving?

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner at Angela's and Danny's and got to meet some new folks and see some others we hadn't seen for years. And we missed a few of our regulars, Karen, Richard, and Daniel, who felt they needed to stick a bit closer to Seton Hospital than the rest of us who traveled north. People were coming and going on their own schedules, just like the old days. I drove up in the rain and by the time I got to Arlington it was in the mid 30's. Of course, that would never keep me from a turkey dinner. I've a few more pictures than usual in this post and more still that I'll make available shortly. I chose these because they'll fit in my brief but trenchant narrative.

Once I broke out my camera, I felt the thing to do was stir up trouble so I could document it all. The best place to do that is in the kitchen where everyone is hard at work preparing my dinner. . . okay, "our" dinner. Here, I'm trying to convince Mary to take credit for the spinach salad Tracy just put together. She was pleasant about it, but having none of my shenanigans.

This may be more work than I'd expected. I was still hanging in the neighborhood when Tracy returned and added the fruits of her labor to the buffet.

Tracy and Matt traveled the farthest (from the UK) to brighten our day and the picture above shows them with Tracy's granddad, who dropped in to see that everybody was behaving themselves. The three of them are sandwiched between our new friends (and Matt's parents), John and Sarah. They came from the Turks and Caicos islands to see what kind of people Matt and Tracy were hanging out with. It was a great visit and we thoroughly enjoyed meeting them.

Now, several of the attendees chose to run the somewhat damp 2K Turkey Trot over in Fort Worth the day before. And I found the headgear some of the entrants chose to keep their ears warm very disturbing when I saw photographs of them on Facebook.

Danny really bonded with his fowl hat apparently and seemed to be talking to it in his corner of the kitchen while he prepared his portion of our feast. Notice the interest Danny's friend exhibits when he becomes aware of the pleasant smells wafting through the kitchen.

Unfortunately, that didn't last long at all. He was clearly terrified when he tumbled to the unspeakable things Danny was doing to the bird on the counter. LOOK AT THE POOR HAT'S EYES! I couldn't take it any more and had to go find someplace to sit down.

Shortly thereafter emotions calmed and peace returned when the monkey bread joined the rest of "the fixin's" on the buffet. It was all every bit as good as it looked. . . note the pies on the sideboard: Pecan, Cherry, Pumpkin, Buttermilk and, of course, Chocolate (hiding in the fridge, no doubt).

I heard several laments during the course of the afternoon about the kids growing up, we being short of toddlers at the moment. Well, we can't have it all our own way, I suppose. And these are good kids after all. They may enjoy a good card game, but keep their greenbacks out of sight lest they scandalize any transients who might wander through the family room. (Did you notice Blake's chapeau? He's very close to Danny, his grandfather, and seems possibly to have inherited his attraction to avian head wear. We don't usually bring it up, not wanting to embarrass him.)

They all love my pictures, this crew, and decided after I'd already stowed my camera for the drive back to Austin that this was an excellent time for some group shots. But that's okay. This is one of the better ones; at least nobody's curled up on the floor asleep. It was another truly grand Thanksgiving.

I Really Have to Get Out More

I had another of those "computer events" a couple weeks ago. You know the ones. They used to just announce themselves (at the worst possible moment of course) by displaying the "Blue Screen of Death". When it happened in October 2012, I remember getting a message telling me the hard disk was about to fail. While I pondered the warning and my next move, thinking things had really come a long way, it quit on me and I lost. . . well, never mind, I already cried on your shoulder about that.

This time it simply wouldn't boot. I didn't panic, I just tried anything I could think of for an hour and a half and finally. . . SUCCESS! It booted. I spent the rest of the day backing up all kinds of stuff I should have been backing up regularly. But I'd been at it for some time and I thought I'd leave it on, get some sleep and finish up in the morning. Microsoft decided sometime in the wee hours that I needed some security updates and promptly installed them for me. Unfortunately, the updates needed a reboot to take effect. Yeah. The reboot didn't quite happen. I'm still hopeful that my efforts to backup those files may be fruitful, but I've been studying the problem and haven't been able to test my recovery plan. I'm just not ready to find out for sure that I've been screwed again. Of course, the good news is: if I delay testing the plan long enough I may simply forget that it happened again.

Anyhow, I've been thus occupied until today, when I finally broke out to get some fresh air and take a few pictures. I heard a few weeks ago that the drought here in the Hill Country had finally been broken. So, the order of the day was to verify the claim. First stop was a short drive to Marshal Ford Marina, the closest portion of Lake Travis to my apartment. The drought IS broken! Defeat Hollow and the marina looked full, just like it did the first time I saw them in the late 60s.

From Marshal Ford I drove up to the gate at the northern approach to Mansfield Dam. One used to be able to find a good view of the lake there. It was pleasant enough today too, but the Ashe Juniper (what we refer to as "cedar") has grown so tall that I could only catch a glimpse of the Lake. It was still great to see water that high and I feel sure it was even wet.

Okay, lunch time. Haven't been to Ski Shores since I took Mom there more than three years ago. Lake Travis had been so low for so long that I just didn't think about dropping by. Of course, Ski Shores is on Lake Austin, not Travis, and Lake Austin is, for all practical purposes, a constant level lake. I needn't have stayed away. They have made some changes to the cafe and they seem to be all to the good. My chicken sandwich was great and I had my first french fries in ages.

These last four shots were all taken at Bull Creek District Park, just off Loop 360. The water in the creek was a lot higher than the last time I shot there. I could nearly walk across with dry feet then, stepping from stone to stone. The big treat though was getting the pictures home and applying some new post processing techniques I've recently been working on. Another reason I haven't gotten around to actually doing anything to resolve my late computer problems. . .

These two, the creek above and the rock wall below are my favorites from today's outing. I ended up including some variations on the procedures I've been practicing and was really quite pleased with the outcome. It seems I now have enough experience with some newly acquired Photoshop skills that I can comfortably combine several to good effect.

I hadn't noticed the rock wall on earlier visits here. I must have been distracted. The stone staircase through the cut near the center of the frame reminded me of "The Rocks", one of my favorite areas of Sydney. And, there was a young man attempting to free climb up the face to the right of the staircase. That reminded me that my son, Dave, has started rock climbing again.

This last shot appeared to be a root-ball from an uprooted tree/shrub lying half in and half out of the creek. I thought the submerged portion merited some extra interest with the movement of the water. A little more depth and a big carp would really have looked nice. In any case, I like it well enough to have made it my current wallpaper.

I really do need to get out more often.