August 2001 Archives

I've included dotcomments in my blog. You can be the first one to add a comment!

Our bookgroup party worked like a charm, although I had way too much cheese for the people that showed up. I see more raclette in the near future...

Homer also behaved very nicely. When he barked at the first person to arrive, we explained to him that barking was inappropriate behavior (we learned how in the class on Monday) and he was better with the next person and didn't bark after that at all. He spend most of the dinner laying under the table (no, he's not a beggin' dog).

I'm going to try to set up a webcam of the back yard, so hopefully there will be something more exciting (i.e. homercam) on this site in a week or so.

And I just love how my Kitchen Aid Mixer beats six eggwhites into the stiffest snow in no time at all. Definitely my favorite appliance.

If you don't have one, get one. In cobalt blue, of course!

Tonight Jennifer and I are hosting our book group. We're serving Raclette and since that's a very Swiss dish, I went ahead and baked a Rüeblitorte last night. This is one of my favorite Swiss deserts. It's a carrot cake that's quite different from the American kind. It uses beaten egg whites as leavening and instead of most of the flower it uses grated hazelnuts and almonds.

Unfortunatelly I don't have a 26cm spring form - my 9" spring form makes the cake be much higher which makes it difficult to bake it correctly (the center tends to stay mushy). This might be a good excuse to buy a 10" pan. Yeah, and my oven's crappy temperature control might be a good excuse to buy a new oven? If I only had two grand to blow...

The trip to Kansas went great. Although the drive from Austin is long, it was bearable because we made a stop in Wichita Falls on the way there, and in Ft. Worth on the way back. Also, most of it was in Jennifer's mom's Avalon, which is a very comfortable car.

The whole purpose of the trip was to surprise Cynthia on her 60th birthday with a flock of relatives (and me :-) from Texas, NY and Chicago. The surprise went off like a charm and you could tell that she was touched to see everyone. We were worried that she might suspect something, but apparently she didn't, despite Pat's erratic behavior (like buying spare air matresses and linnens).

Pat and Cynthia's farm house in Kansas is pretty impressive and the area where it is located is really lovely. My image of America's Heartland was flat and boring (hey, that's how it looks in the Wizard of Oz). Instead, their area is nicely hilly and very green. The topography reminded me of Bohemia, although there didn't seem to be any real forests in Kansas. The other cool thing was the weather. Although it was hot during the day (not Austin hot, but still pretty warm) it was nice and cool at night. Again, you could sense that they have real seasons up there.

Pat also has a bunch of great toys. For one, he's got a John Deere Gator with which we had way too much fun. He also as a huge "shed" filled with the coolest wood-working powertools. I always thought that this type of stuff only existed on TV and was not to be had by mere mortals. Obviously I was wrong - too bad they live so far away.

I hope that we'll get to visit some other time and spend a little more time in the area. The trip there was a bit too rushed for my taste. When Jfer and I tried to take a scenic route to see the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, we were thwarted due to the loud weeping and gnashing of teeth from the back of the car. So it was back to the straight and boring interstate. Oh well, some other time...

Well, it looks like I won't be singing at Madrigal this year, since, according to the rehearsal schedule, I have a one hour overlap with my Portuguese classes.

Bummer, but it had to happen at some time...

Also, Kim has put up auditions info and redesigned the look of the site. I think I like it (although I don't particularly care for fixed-width web-sites, especially those that are wider than 640 pixels). I don't like the way the HTML looks, though -- I shudder everytime I see a <FONT> tag in any page. Hello, CSS anyone?!?

I come back from me weekend in Kansas, and my site is down. My host, gleemhost.com seems to have bitten the dust. Just trying to ping it from work fails because the name doesn't resolve. Argh, I'll hate it I have to move again...

I'll be Kansas-bound in mere three hours or so. Actually, first Ft. Worth bound, then Wichita Falls bounds and, tomorrow morning, Oklahoma and Kansas bound.

I'm kinda looking forward to being in Kansas for a couple of days, but I'm sure the drive is going to be a PITA, although Rita's car is pretty comfy.

One thing I must do: on the way back, when we cross the border to Oklahome, I shall proclaim that "I don't believe we're in Kansas anymore". Although for all I know, it will be the same boring flat scenery...

Is it really true that Helms is retiring? Talk about a dinosaur heading towards extinction...

Homer is not much of a fetcher but I am determined to teach him to play frisbee. I got him this disk today and plan to start indoctrinating him as soon as I get home.

We need some way to dissipate all that energy he's got (i.e. wear him out). He like chasing other dogs, but most of the dogs he meets at the park are older or slower.

Jennifer is slowly starting to transfer her stuff to my house. That's both good and bad. The good part is that she's got cool stuff (my kitchen now contains plenty of stem ware) and it makes us rearrange and get rid of lots of my junk. The bad part is that I'll have to get off my lazy butt and get rid of old junk I never use. And I'll have to share my closets. And we'll disagree about what to put on the walls.

Of course, the great thing is that she'll be living with me :-)

I finished my Defensive Driving Class yesterday. The instructor, John, was not as good as the one on Monday (Les) but it was still bearable. They pretty much give you every single answer during the class - many several times (like, "all TRUE/FALSE questions are TRUE, except for questions 17 & 18" or "Question 20 is B", or "C and 'None of the Above' are NEVER the answer"). Not that the questions are all that difficult. I'm sure that even without taking the class I would have passed. Still, the girl whose test I graded managed to get three (out of 20) wrong, two of which were TRUE/FALSE questions...

And then there had to be someone in the audience who would disagree with the instructor's material. John said that statistics show that having just one drink increases your chances of being in an accident by 50% (yay for me as the perennial designated driver). So there was this woman who was taking her eighth(!) defensive driving course (she was only 29, so it's pretty much a course every 16 months) and who had more tickets that she couldn't dismiss, and she's trying to argue that it depends on your "tolerance" for alcohol. John was pretty good about not pointing out that given it was her 8th class, maybe her views on cause and effect in driving might be slightly skewed. Still, I bet she'll become part of his repertoir in future classes.

I get to go to the second installement of my Comedy Defensive Driving Class. Last night's instructor was fairly decent and kept us awake and entertained. Also, the chairs are more comfy then when I took it at Esther's Follies half a decade ago.

So far, we've learned that you're not supposed to run over pedestrians, that you want to yield to larger/faster vehicles and that Texans lead the nation in accidents involving trains and flash-floods.

One of his first questions was what the Yield Sign looks like and the majority of the people thought it was yellow & black. Yellow and black, WTF?!? Apparently that's the color it used to be thrity years ago and people have not noticed or something...

Thinking about the signs made me realize that I really had to work on picturing the common signs (can say what color and shape the "Road Narrows" sign is, is it text or some symbol?). On the other hand, I know perfectly what the corresponding signs look like in Europe (actually, most of the world uses the same traffic signs), although I hardly ever drive there - I guess trafic signs were more fascinating and memorable when I was little.

FYI: Here's the American "Road Narrows" sign and here's the corresponding international sign.

I just learned that Jason, one of the application engineers, it leaving @hand to move to Phoenix. I'm bummed - he's a great guy and now if feels like a piece of us is missing. I hate it when certain people leave - not because of the work they do (I'm sure we can hire a couple of engineers to replace that) but because it changes the feel of the company. Sure, the comany grows and we'll have new people, but it's nice to work with folks that remember what it was like when there were just a few of us.

I'm impressed by his schedule, though. He'll be out of here in two weeks and they even moved up their wedding from October to next weekend. Tlak about ahuge change in life!

This weekend we also started our chimney resurection program. As part of my A/C overhaul, I have had more insulation added to my attic and need to to plug the hole in the chimney to prevent racoons from getting into my attick and trampling down the insulation.

When I got on the roof, I discovered that a huge piece of siding was missing from the chimney! Actually three of the sides of the chimney were kinda rotting away and I decided to replace these as well. So we picked up siding in Jennifer's P.T. Cruiser (I knew the car would be good for something) and started dismantling parts of the chimney siding. I went a bit overboard and now I'll need to get just a little more siding (unfortunatelly, it only comes in 16 foot pieces). So I'll end up with 14' of useless siding (along with most of a roll of roofing felt) and I didn't even manage to use the chimney project as a powertool purchase justification.

We had a great walk in Wallnut Creek Park on Saturday. When you're down in the shade of the trees, it actually does not feel too hot! We explored a section of the park where I've never been before and got to hike up the bed of one of the creeks.

Unfortunately the three hour hike was a bit too much for Homer and when we got home we discovered that he developed blisters on his paws and one of them is broken. So we got him neosporen and some dog boots so that he can still do his twice-a-day walk (and waste some energy and keep the back yard clean). The boots seem to do the trick, he runs without problems when they're on, but they have the tendency to come off (poor design, IMO).

Jennifer has been looking for some better ones online, and found this gem. Apparently there is a thriving dog-boot business out there (just try searching for "doog boot"). Bark'n'Boots seem like they might stay on better.

I received the Texas Union Informal Classes catalogue and am tempted by two courses. One is Portuguese (beginning and intermediate conversation) and the other is Dog Obedience. The dillema that I have is that Madrigal Dinner rehearsals are going to conflict with one or the other.

I could have Jennifer do the Dog Obedience by herself, but if music rehearsals are on Tue/Thu then I'd have a real conflict. I think it would be awesome if I had some portuguese before we go to Brazil - I don't want to be a loud talking yankee tourist. Besides, I haven't learned another language in over a decade and I'd like to see if I'm still able to. At least um pouquinho!

We left Homer at Meredith's over the weekend and apparently he had a blast with her dogs. However, he decimated his leash which was left out in her back yard. Before going over to Meredith's, he also managed to get at his retractable leash (anything bellow 4' is apparently reachable) and the only thing that I found we about 2 inches and the metal clasp!

So we had to go to the pet store and buy him a new leash (and a bag of food). He seemed a bit fidgety and - when we didn't respond to his hinting - created a huge pile in the middle of Petco. He must have been saving it up over the weekend - the volume reminded me of that phone scene from Jurrasic Park III or of that adorable little dog from Robert Rodriguez' Los Hooligans. You can't blame the dog for the accident, but now he has started chewing on his new leash and he's getting more efficient at it.

This morning after our walk I noticed that my paper was not in my driveway (the paper person sometimes skips my house). When I let Homer into the back yard, I noticed that a) the gate to the back yard was open and b) the paper was in my back yard, partially shredded. I think the gate didn't get closed properly when my window screening guy was taking measurements the day before. This means that a) Homer knows there is an exit, b) he returns to the back yard despite an opening to freedom and c) he is teaching himself how to retrieve the paper. We still have to work on the details (and keep the gate shut).

Jfer and I survived the diving course over the weekend. I was glad that we got to do our practice dives on Friday. We had not dived since our cruise last summer and it's quite different to be in 6.5mm wetsuits. We were concerned that the suits would be too thick, but we were really greateful for them when we were in the 70-72F water in San Marcos.

For anyone planning to take the class, definitelly go for a heavy wet suit. Also, you'll only need one tank - they refill it on site and you won't be using much air anyways since most of the time is spent above 20'.

This was also the first time we used dive computers and I loved it. For one, I think my NAUI dive table is somewhere in Roatan. Second, our Lake Travis dives were off of Jennifer's SSI dive tables since the tables do not take multilevel diving into their calculations. A dive computer is not neccessary for the Aquarena course (at the lake's depth, you could stay down there pretty much indefinitely) but I would always rent one for a "real" dive trip.

Jfer has a more detailed account of the class.

We're taking the Aquarena Center Science Diving course this weekend! We've been talking about it for most of the summer, and Jennifer finally booked us. So tomorrow afternoon we'll get some equipment and do a couple of practice dives.

If you never hear from me again, you'll know why...