RTT - Odds and Ends and taunting of friends

The last few weeks have been a bit crazy with the new job, new rental, new town, new state. I've taken a bunch of pictures and posted a few on Facebook. Facebook made it much easier to keep in contact with everyone without having to write a whole post or worrying about internet access. I just took the photos with my phone and uploaded them from my phone.

Here just a few random things going on around here.


I taunted my friend Mark via text with our crystal clear, particulate free, actual water tasting water.

Me: It has this funny fresh clean taste.
Mark: Ooooooh is that healthy? it probably has no taste--how sad. I like to feel the testure of water like chewing the air..

He's just jealous.

My next text to him.
Me: Baby it's cold out there.
Mark: ........

We set up some outdoor stuff

Our little winter garden and our clothesline.

Sunday breakfast and family lunch/dinner. Or is that lunner? Or dinch?

Homemade easy peasy beignets. I made these from refrigerator biscuits. While I was frying them up I wondered; "Why can't I do this with cinnamon rolls?" that will be the next thing. Nothing like taking something already bad for you up a notch.
 

We knew that Older Boy and his wife were coming to visit but Dr. Boy showed up out of the blue. Made this mama cry a little to have everyone all together again. I'll be guilt-ing the kids into visiting more often now that we are so close.


Oh an then there was this. It showed up in the mail. Our little film didn't win an award but this was good enough for me. I consoled myself that I was smart enough not to spend $700 in airfare not to win. Though winning would have been cool. I could have accepted via the internet. Sort of like U2 didn't one year at the Grammys. I probably would have been as drunk.

That's it. Go over to Stacy's place to visit other Randomers. She's back up and running from her cross country move too.

Stay groovy,
M

RTT = weekend roundup

I will be using rodeo and/or Texas expressions throughout this post. Why? Because it is rodeo season here in Texas or should I say southeast Texas. This state is so danged big it has to sit down in shifts. Another reason for what may be a post rampant with rodeo/Texas euphemisms is because my friend of 33 years, Sally and her husband can down to the Houston Rodeo to see Sally's favorite country star, someone by the name of Brad Paisley. She says that she refrained from making a cake of herself. I'm not sure I believe her. I'm pretty sure she was as crazy as a peach orchard sow when Brad stepped off the stage and into the crowd. Anyway, they were in town for the weekend so JR and I took them on a whirlwind tour around the area. 

First up:

John (Sally's husband) eats a steak the size of his head. With a bone that looks like it would boom-a-rang back to you. We kept waiting for the table to tip over just like Fred Flintstone's car.

Then we took them to a local place that makes beignets.

And, while the beignets at Crescent City are no where near the tasty fried dough and powder sugared goodness of Cafe du Monde's in New Orleans these are nothing to sneeze at. Or they are when you snort up a load of powder sugar. We cowboyed up to eat 2 orders of them lickity split.

Then we took them to the Johnson Space Center. Where the trams where named after planets (or space missions, I not sure which). I tweeted that I was hoping to get on the Uranus tram only to have my hopes dashed when we boarded the Neptune tram. Truly disappointing but as they say, If you can't handle the ride, don't climb into the chute.

Then they went to their concert. While they were there Nessa must have felt left out of the fun. In a fit of pique she gutted one of her toys (called babies in the Dog's Life household). Some days she is all horns and rattles. 

Actually, gutting babies is a past time that she enjoys. As she does it on a fairly regular basis. 

The wildflowers have started to bloom

I decided to get in while the gate's still open to grab some photos for ya'll.

Next, we drove down to Galveston. While waiting an interminably long time for our breakfast this showed up:

It was so ugly it looks like the dogs have been keepin’ it under the porch. Yes, that is purple carpet covering that thang. 

Then we left the restaurant to go to Moody Gardens. 

We were in tall cotton at the Aquarium. 

I was as happy as a gopher in soft dirt that Sally and John came down to Texas to visit. After ferrying them around for the weekend I think they plan to come back real soon. We will have to discourage them from coming in the summer because is it so hot the hens are laying hard-boiled eggs then. October and November are good months though. 

Well, ya'll come back now, real soon.

Love,

M

Wine Fest 2009, Kemah, Texas

Driving to work I saw the billboard, "WINE FEST". I promptly snatched up my cell phone. "Hey honey, they are having a wine fest on September 19th. Wanna go?" (I've been known to drop my Ts and Gs.)

"Need you ask?"

"Alrighty, done and done".

$35 per person later that day I was the proud owner of 2 tickets to the 1st annual Kemah Wine Fest. I couldn't even pronounce the name of the town. Still can't for that matter. But, after enough wine does it really matter? Yeah, I didn't think so.

For our first time at the Boardwalk the weather cooperated by not being wretchedly hot and sticky. We arrived plenty early because we had heard that the parking was almost non-existent. Turns out it wasn't that bad. From all accounts the Boardwalk was pretty much decimated from hurricane Ike so when they built it back up they must have added more parking.

There were rides, shops, and restaurants. Lots of new wood, workers busy rebuilding the wooden roller coaster, and freshly planted landscaping.

JR enjoying his first beignet. A buck and a half of freshly fried doughy yumminess. Poor guy needs his mustache trimmed. It was a little hard to determine where the powered sugar started and the gray ended. Such as life when you are getting as old as we are.

We checked the menus from the restaurants that lined the Boardwalk out just in case we wanted to come down again for dinner and drinks.
What the... Who eats gator?

This will not be a delicacy that we'll be partaking in. Of course, when I say we really mean JR. I'm using the royal "we" here.

The door or I should say ropes opened to the wine fest. We grabbed our glasses and started to sample. This wasn't one of those wine fests where you get a half dozen tickets then you're done. This was an all you could drink affair. The promoters really underestimated who they were dealing with when they made this decision.

They just compounded their mistake by including one of these.
I was on a mission to get my $35 worth.
I was not alone.

JR is not much of a wine drinker but he was willing to work with the situation then we found the beer booth. And according to JR it was really good beer too. The beer guys were giving out very cool glasses. Beer and beer glasses. They became JR's new best friends.

At the end of the day we walked away with 2 new wine glass (like we needed more? You've seen pictures of my bar. Those 2 shelves of wine glass don't include the fancy stuff, just the every day wine glasses) and 3 stemmed beer glasses. I tried to get 4 beer glasses but they ran out.

We had a great time, met some wonderful people that we hope to get together with soon and wasn't encumbered by a hangover the next day. JR and I figure we'll go to all future Kemah Wine Fests until they figure out that you just can't give a person a glass and let them go to town. They start putting a limit on it and we're out of there.

Love,
M