Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Dallas-
Steve saw the Ripley's wax museum as we were driving to our motel for the night, so he turned around and we went through it. The sacry part was scary to me because it was so much like a haunted house and I kept expecting people to jump out at me. the wax figures were pretty scary.
Delaney wanted to pose with Johnny Cash

Steve wanted to pose with Dave.



Ft Worth Scinece and History Museum- Special exhibit of Da Vinci machines. These were found in his notebooks as small drawings and someone built them on a small scale so they could be seen around the world. Some don't work, like this air screw.
Some were built on comission for a war

Some were kinda cool ideas.. like this paddle boat


Here's a copy of one of his notebooks




Here's a video of a simple machine that did work. Some of his "inventions" were improvements over the machines they were already using.

The Wedding-
Here's the reason we went to Austin. meet Elizabeth and Geoff George, the newly married couple.
There's a sign somewhere that says the Wizard Academy is NOT affiliated with Harry Potter. Ok, it's a business school and they have a chapel on their campus where the wedding was held. You can read all about it here: www.chapeldulcinea.org/

As you are heading to the chapel, this is what you see. Cool.


Austin- day one and two- Allen's boots- they were very elaborate boots here- costing about $400.00 a pair and the tall snakeskin ones were $1,500. A bit out of our price range, even IF we were boot people. Downtown Austin and the bridge where the bats hang out. We saw a nearby hotel advertize they had a "batio". I would suppose it was for prime viewing of the evening flight of the bats.

We saw this place on Food network- A candy store in SoCO that would make any number of sodas the old fashioned way. I had an Orange/ peach soda and delaney was thrilled with the gummy selection.


I love the name of the store as much as the store itself. Very nice displays of a myriad of old stuff.





Ok, so the wedding wasn't until evening, so we spent the day in a cave called Inner Space. I know! Why would we go all that way to see a cave when we live in the CAVE STATE!!??

Steve wanted to and I love caves and plan on doing more cave quilts soon. Caves all have something unique about them. I wish i was able to take better pictures in the cave. My camera wasn't very happy there and then the battery died.

Ok, so the cool stuff here was that there was a mixture of rocks, so not everything was capable of growing formations. It had a fault line and a colapse. It had bats (small ones) and we were able to use flashlights and explore an area by ourselves. Those few mins. were enough to let Steve and I know we are past our prime for crawling around in small places.

The down side to the cave was that for as recent as it was discovered (1960's) it was pretty damaged. I saw several broken formations. I absolutely HATE when they try to make up stupid stories to explain formations (princess castle, socks, etc..) especially when they try to make up a lame story to tie all of them together. Of course, some formations do look just like bacon, or pipe organs, but leave the elaborate stories behind.

Austin Tx- day one

My niece, Elizabeth, was getting married in Austin Tx on the 7th of August. Steve, Delaney and I attended, but we left Tyler and Maura home. Tyler was getting ready for college and working. Maura had Band camp and a carboard boat race (for charity) she had been planning for months... and work.

So, we drove to Waco and visited with Steve's brother and his wife, Susie and their daughter, Abby. Abby and Delaney are about 3 months apart and so they get along like a house on fire. This year's plot was to move there so they could be together all the time... or have Delaney just go and live with them. LOL! Anyway, I got to see Susie's big cactus sculpture from horseshoes and her howling coyote. Of course, they were fabulous hosts. Steve toured the plant Joe manages while I was drinking coffee and trying to wake up.

The next day, we traveled to Austin and did a few things in Austin. We toured SOCO and had lunch at the Whole foods flagship store (yum) and then it was time to head back to meet up for the family dinner.

I don't remember the name of the place, but we ate in the Pope room. It is a round room with a large round table and a huge lazy susan in the center with a bust of the pope in a glass case in the center. The rest of the room was filled with various photos of the pope. We couldn't get a photo of everyone there, so Steve came up with the idea of doing a video and using the lazy susan to show everyone. It's fun.


Monday, August 02, 2010

End days of summer-
I decided I would start work on a bigger piece for a set of windows in my Living room. It took me a couple days to do the rough cutting for the pieces that will go across the tops of the windows. But then, something happpened to my grinder. I called the company and they think it had something to do with the wiring and the switch- but told me to send it to them and they would fix it and send it back. I've had to set this project aside until I get my grinder back. So, instead of spending this week working on glass, I decided to repaint the bathroom.
I think I was just tired of the blue and the elves. It kept me busy while I was waiting to hear if I was going to texas with or without Steve. Sometimes his job is so exciting and hard to plan around. I finished stripping the table and now it's back in the Living room where it belongs. I probably should do the two smaller side chairs, but I got tired of inhaling stripping fumes. LOL.
It's gotten so hot here, hotter than normal, and it's cooking my garden. I finally got a cucumber. The squash died before any squash appeared. I've chased the japaneese beetles around from area to area in my yard. It's interesting to see what they like and don't like to munch on.
I'm looking forward to the trip to Texas and happy Steve will be going along. Looking forward to seeing the family and meeting the new ones at the wedding.