End of the Trip

We are at my friend's house for the weekend. It's always sad to say goodbye to Topsail Island, but I'm looking forward to giving my husband a tour of Duke University. I hope this rain goes away.

Smart and Stupid

I feel really smart just being in this wonderful beach cottage, but I feel pretty stupid trying to use my daughter's laptop. Laptops? Not really my thing. The sound of the waves crashing on the shore outside? Yeah. That's my thing.

I AM READY

This will be the view from our deck and living room for the next week. I can't wait. The cab picks us up in 9 hours. Let the adventures begin!

Low Tide

I just went back and read my posts from the last two years that I had written just before my May beach trip. I did this because I have been a slug this week. Where is that normal excitement energy? The 2009 post said I was so excited I felt like my skull was going to crack open. Right now I feel like such a dullard, my skull would more likely implode into the vacuum of what should be my brain. Mom would say it was my biorhythms. My best guess is that the four flights in one week that I did for my 50th birthday gave me some sort of travel brain damage.
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There is no place I would rather be than the beach cottage, so what's going on here? Is it the dread of hauling luggage through the airport, going through security, slow walking down the gangplank of stand and wait while people try to stuff their crap in the overhead bins, then wait 20 minutes for a beer while sitting in something less comfortable than a dentist's chair? I feel like Charlie Brown complaining about Christmas, which I never quite understood.
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I hope the old adage Mother knows best is true here and it's just my biorhythms. Maybe they are just at low tide or something. And maybe just like at the beach, the tide will change.

Timber!

With blogger down those few days, I was not able to post and it was annoying, so I have some catching up to do. 'Tis a rare beast that I have any computer time on a Sunday, but My Sweetie has gone to a Rangers baseball game with his sister. Speaking of rare beasts, (ha ha! No! I don't mean his sister!) take a look at this:
That is our neighborhood bobcat, who I have named "Timber." I figure Timber is a good name for either a boy or a girl and it also references the name of our neighborhood. Our neighbor two houses up the hill snapped this the other day.
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I think I was the first one to spot Timber. I caught a glimpse of Timber at dusk two weeks ago. I had just gone into the kitchen and saw movement outside and glanced out the window to see it trotting across our deck. I yelled, "What the f### is that?!!" and ran to the back door and then through the house, and through the garage to the side door, opened it and then asked myself, Hey! What the heck are you doing? And then I stepped back inside and quickly closed the door. All this time My Sweetie is chasing me around going, "What? What?!!" So then I described what I had seen and we went online and found several bobcat pictures that looked like what I saw.
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A day or so later I told Carole about it. A week later when we returned from San Antonio, Carole asked if I had told any other neighbors and I had not. While we were gone, the neighbor that lives between Carole and me told Carole that a bobcat had been spotted in the neighborhood. She didn't hear it from me!
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This past Thursday,Carole and her husband stepped out in the early evening and startled Timber just emerging from their downhill neighbor's bushes and it ran across their front yard and up the street toward the top of the hill and disappeared. I ran into them when I came back from the store. They were across the street telling another neighbor. He knew all about Timber and told them that the neighbor two houses up from me had gotten a quick blurry picture. I called him yesterday and got a copy. So now every night at dusk, we look for Timber, but I haven't seen him since two weeks ago. Apparently Timber and Barney have not bothered each other although there was a wild scream in our backyard one night about a week ago. Carole and her husband also heard it as they were returning from a walk. Hopefully Barney and Timber will keep any confrontations to just screaming matches. You know, I was wondering why I haven't seen any possums yet this year.

Really?

I see blogger is finally working again.

San Antonio Was Fun!

After I finished my Meals on Wheels deliveries on Friday, I came back home and finished packing and My Sweetie and I hit the road. We stopped right away for lunch and I had lobster bisque and a salad, which is a great way to start anything. The actual road trip part was pretty easy except for traffic jams in both Austin and San Antonio. It was fun playing with his satellite radio. The names of the stations are funny. One station is called "The Joint" and it plays reggae party music. And no, saying "reggae party" is not redundant because some reggae music is actually serious. Anyway, we had a pleasant surprise upon arrival to our hotel. I had booked a city view balcony room because that was the only option for a balcony room when I booked online, but we were offered a river view. That's my balcony there on the third floor:
We wandered around the Riverwalk Friday night and both totally lost our bearings. We never did know where we were. We finally found a place to eat dinner that wasn't a tourist chain and when we looked up from our table we realized our hotel was right across the river. That was funny, because we had no idea where we were.
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I was surprised at all the changes to the Riverwalk since 1988. It was pretty much all tourist chain restaurants, but worse than that was across from the Alamo, where scores of men died fighting for Texas, was a wax museum and a world record or believe it or not museum of hokey stuff. I thought that was disgraceful. It was at least very tacky.
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Anyway, we had fun on the Riverwalk. It was pretty crowded but not horribly so, although May is apparently The Time of Big Events. We saw idiotic bachelorette party girl groups at night wearing stupid hats and such and during the afternoon on Saturday, we saw several prom groups. There's a picture of one of those in the slideshow below. They were all very sweet and cute The picture of the five bells represents the original five Spanish missions of San Antonio, one of which was the Alamo.
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We had great food, enjoyed a great jazz band and had nice weather. I even got to hear street musicians sing Malagueña. The pretty girl on the left in the picture is singing it. I had never heard a woman sing it. She did a great job. It was a fun little vacation. Here are some pics:

San Antonio

(photo from Southern Living)

Friday afternoon My Sweetie and I are taking our first road trip together since March of 2003. We are not big road trippers (obviously!), but My Sweetie bought a new Prius this year and has been itching to take it out on the road. We are heading south to San Antonio. With a few stops along the way, it should be about a five hour trip. San Antonio is most famous for its Riverwalk. The Riverwalk is really pretty and goes on and on. There are bars and cafes along the riverwalk and there are river taxis that cruise the water. You can see a bit of a river taxi just under the bridge up there. And there are other little pedestrian bridges like that so you can change sides or just stand up there and look around.
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The first time I went to San Antonio was in April 1984. My first husband and I were having a sort of ersatz honeymoon. We had married in January on a Thursday and he started a new job the following Monday. I guess he had to work there 90 days to qualify for a few days off. We actually went to the beach. It was my first Texas beach trip and being from North Carolina, I was really disappointed, but this story is not about the slack Texas coast. What we did was stop on the way in San Antonio to spend the night with his aunt and uncle - people he had not seen in years. We woke up the next morning and had horrible scrambled eggs that his aunt made and since I was 5 months pregnant, I don't know how I was able to slurp them down - they were like soup - but I was trying to be polite. Although I was then in a hurry to get to the "beach," he insisted that we make a stop at the Riverwalk downtown. I had never heard of it and had no real interest, but it was my birthday and I was in a good mood. I was very impressed. And it was 100° which was my personal high temperature record for my birthday. Still is. So as pretty as it was, it was very hot and I was quite pregnant so we did not stay long.
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In 1988 when my second husband and I were planning our little November getaway wedding we decided on San Antonio. We found a lovely boutique hotel on the river and got a room that opened out onto a long balcony. I knew it would not be 100° in November, but also knew it would be nice out and we planned to be married on the balcony on a Friday afternoon. We got there early afternoon on Thursday and had to go downtown to get the marriage license and so did not get a long time to enjoy the Riverwalk that day although we did have time to take a short river taxi cruise. The next day was all about getting ready for the wedding and then our guests began arriving early: my parents, his parents and two of his siblings. Then the wedding on the balcony followed by all of us walking to a nearby restaurant for dinner and then stopping in for drinks at our fancy hotel bar. I was very stressed because I had not met his parents before, so obviously I had not really had time to relax and enjoy the locale. On Saturday we got up, got ready and left to come back to DFW for a reception party with friends. So again, I did not get a chance to really explore the whole Riverwalk. And that was the last time I was there.
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Although this will also be a relatively short trip, there will be no distractions and I will finally be able to just amble along the Riverwalk and enjoy everything. It's supposed to be 93° and partly cloudy, but I am guessing that all the shady trees and the river will make the Riverwalk feel a bit cooler. And I won't be pregnant. And I won't be meeting future in-laws for the first time. This should be nice.

(Still) Not Like Other People

That's the picture my best friend took when I parted ways with her and her friend that Thursday night in New York. I don't care for sweets. My friend posted that pic on her facebook and women wrote things like, "I want one of everything!" and "That's making me so hungry!
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Ewwww! Not only does nothing in that picture make me hungry in the least, but I find most of it repulsive. I studied the picture to see if I could find anything at all that I could eat and finally noticed the kiwi slices at the bottom. I could eat those. And I love strawberries, but upon close inspection the strawberries, as well as the other fruit all seem to be covered in some sort of sugary syrupy something. What a waste. But I could eat the kiwi slices.

More Crazy Temps

We had a low of 46° today. We have had our heat on since yesterday. This is unheard of. It is now 48° and dark and rainy and thundery. I think I will make a fire. (Now I don't feel bad for not having cleaned out the fireplace yet.) This weekend we will be in San Antonio and the temperature for Saturday there is is supposed to be 94°. This will be like my New York trip all over again, cold then hot in just a few days. My cat Barney thinks I control the weather and he is mad at me. I don't blame him.