Day trip - McKinney Falls

Saturday was booked with a trip to the farmers' market, an adventure in engineering with the "Expose Your Daughter to Engineering" day at UT for Mike and Eleanor, and an afternoon of dessert and non-stop chatter for me and my local girl friends (Karia and Alison).  Sunday we took a short drive (really, it was actually short, even by my standards) to McKinney Falls State Park.  While there, we found an ashy, dark green rock the rangers identified as Bentonite = ancient, compressed, volcanic ash weathered by water.  A new one for us.

The Morphing Pigeon Paradox

Or, how we went from, “Stupid pigeons!” to, “Shhh…don’t wake the pigeons!” and back again (sort of) in like 2 hours.

Our Austin life is decidedly urban, and it comes with a number of the urban life’s drawbacks.  Including pigeons.  They’ve been incessantly, “rooroorooing,” and crapping on our fourth story patio at least as long as we’ve lived here, and despite our best efforts to make them unwelcome  --- First that was just us rapidly approaching the glass patio door, then that was us actually having to fling the door open, then as they grew immune to that we’d rush the door, fling it open and yell “shoo!”.  Now I can get within striking distance and these things don’t flinch, which means I guess I’m getting a water gun  --  well, despite this while I was making supper yesterday , they decided they love us and they want to share their babies with us. 

For weeks now I’ve been caught in Sorites paradox of a heap, unconsciously battling my instinct that one pigeon just might become a flock of poop-mounding pigeons, while also trying to be reasonable (one pigeon does not actually equal a flock).  Reason is flawed here, and it took me about 45 minutes too long to figure that out.  Here is the timeline of our education :  1:30 pm = I inspect porch for poop cleaning plan.  Just a porch full of poop, and a couple of pigeons that look familiar. “ Shoo!”  4:00pm =  Eleanor and I get home, she shoos pigeons and then says, “I think they built a NEST!”  Uhhh, yes, that is sort of a nest, but I just dropped the garlic in the pan and that’s only supposed to be alone in there for 30 seconds so I rush back and add ground beef.  “We’d better get rid of that thing soon, before they put an egg in it,” says I, thoughtlessly continuing out loud, “It wouldn’t be fair to get rid of it once they have an egg.”  Can pigeons understand English!?!?  (Note: seven year olds can, and they are very strict about verbal contracts.)  Seriously, I’m making tacos which only take a TOTAL of 30 minutes and I’m like half way done at this point which means I only have 15 minutes of work left until it’s on the table and sometime between the garlic and the serving Eleanor exclaims, “There’s an EGG now!  We’re going to have baby birds!”  Crap.

I feel sick to my stomach.  I feel sympathetic to this pair of crappers I also kind of dislike.  The two of them and their one little egg.  (Ditto for Eleanor, as you might imagine.)  I realize now that I know them, and it’s all making sense --  It’s been the same stupid pigeons  all this time, and I wasn’t just overly influenced by all the children’s literature I take in when that one day I saw this pair waddling around and I thought, “well, they look like a little couple out house shopping."  Crap.

So I think, ok, it will be an adventure (still feeling slightly sick) and we’ll make it a science project and we’ll have a front row seat on hatching baby birds, and we’ll track their progress, and all that jazz.  Then Mike comes home and it gets real y’all.  That list of questions Eleanor and I make in our science journal, all about what we want to investigate during a project, it morphs a bit at this point.  From, “How many days does a pigeon egg take to hatch,” to, “How dangerous is a pigeon mite infestation?”  Seriously.  The yahoo chats Mike digs up about this exact proposition (“Uh oh, pigeons made a nest on my porch, what do I do?”)  are enlightening (?).  I am almost game enough to make my way through the coming piles of crap, I am almost curious enough to agree to two months of noisy baby birds outside my bedroom window, but I think we need to draw the line at bird fleas three feet from the only piece of glass in the entire apartment that opens for fresh air.  I really want to draw that line, anyway.  Uggcrapola. 

Now it’s so complicated it makes me feel really, really bad.  And so the paradox morphs into a struggle with the value of life (what lesson will Eleanor take away here?) and the responsibilities presented along that singular, very personal path we walk through life, and a bunch of other existentialist foo.  But, I kill rats.  Or, I have at my house in Portland, so, I do kill.  And despite what Ernie's best friend Bert exudes, these are sort of like flying rats, and I should forget about their stupid yet cute little waddling selves out house shopping together.  Right?!?!  At any rate, something has to be decided QUICKLY because she will lay a second egg in about 24 hours.  Also, I’d like to point out that after digging up all the dirty facts on porch-based pigeon farming, my husband slept well and this morning wished me luck on his way out the door.

“Oh operator, can I have the maintenance office please!?!”

President's Day Weekend

It was a four day weekend here in the Texas public schools and while we'd normally head to Sun River, Oregon, for some snow shoeing and relaxing with our friends, our Texas selves took it a little differently.  We got to hang out with family, hike, bike, and drink Dr. Pepper.  We just can't "hang out with family" in our normal lives, and we really are loving being in Texas if for nothing else, for that.  As always, you can see photos of our life on our Picasa site... if you need a link just ask!






lunch in Waco

 



Hamilton Pool



They don’t know how lucky they are...

This place has some of the most perfect weather I’ve ever experienced.  Sunny, mildly warm, low humidity.  Really.   From what I can tell, in the Fall/Winter/Spring Austin is, with only temporary interruptions, like Portland is in the summer (and you know how I feel about Portland in the summer… it is WHY we live in Portland the rest of the year… it is p-a-r-a-d-i-s-e).  Yet, look at this traffic:

In Portland, these streets would be notably populated by bikes and the sidewalks would have pedestrians and they wouldn’t just be lolly gagging about, they’d be going somewhere.  As in: between two useful points, getting something done.  Texans, however, don’t pay for sidewalks and bike lanes, just roads. Big, fat, fast roads that work really well at moving masses of cars around efficiently.  But the bike and hike trails are all like hamster wheels, with nowhere to go but back again.  I’m not sure they have the concept of pedestrian or bicycle highways around here, which is, a waste.  Most of the trips I’ve made here in Austin in my car, I could have easily done on a bike if I’d felt my bike had a place.  A right to be, a granting of safe passage.  But here, bikes are in the way and pedestrians are mildly suspicious.

This is not a sustainable way of life and it seems such a shame.  I wish the infrastructure for cheaper, heart-healthier, cleaner modes of transportation were in place in Austin.  And, I wish Portlanders could have six months of easy biking weather, because they'd be really grateful!

Happy Valentine's Day from Texas

We hiked up Enchanted Rock this Saturday, and Eleanor spotted this Valentine-photo-op.  It was a crisp, sunny day... a great day for a hike straight up a rock!  And the BBQ stop we made at Cooper's Pit in Llano topped the whole day off heartily.  You should be here.  Wherever you are, you should be here.

Enchanted Rock - a huge, pink granite exfoliation dome, that rises 425 feet above ground, 1825 feet above sea level, and covers 640 acres. It is one of the largest batholiths (underground rock formations uncovered by erosion) in the United States.  Smack in the middle of Texas hill country.

Our digs in Austin

Our apartment is about a block off "Town Lake" on Lamar Blvd.  It borders Zilker Park, and the Barton Springs pool/playground/kiddie train is within walking distance. (Well, walking distance by the standards of a Portlander.  A Texan might think it a long haul?)  Here we are, for the next few (sunny) months:

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A Perfect Birthday

We had an apartment full of family here on Saturday (John and Kristanne flew down from Dallas, Amy drove up from Houston, and Dad + Anna Lou hauled all the way from Beaumont) and an apartment full of old friends here on Sunday (AJ, Karia + Dan, Alison + Joshie) to celebrate our birthdays.  For me it was a perfect birthday!

First Day of School, Texas Edition

Well, Eleanor started school this morning at her new, Texas school.  She was nervous and excited both, and the reception from the kids was kind of incredible.

First thing, the principal saw us in the office and exclaimed, “Is this our new first grader?!”  Reportedly, only a few minutes earlier a first grade kid had asked him when “the new kid” was going to arrive.  He showed us into the cafeteria, where the kids collect in class groups in the morning.  The kids in her new classroom were super friendly, introducing themselves and trying to tell her how things work and asking her questions.  At one point there was a very brief lull in the chatter and I heard one little girl say, “well, she’s kind of cute.”  Then another one agreed and another one agreed and it was a crack up.  One of the girls asked, “are you friendly?”  Eleanor was silent, as she was through most of this.  Mostly, the kids and I talked about Eleanor while she just sat there smiling a little nervous smile.  I established that she was indeed friendly, but that sometimes she is shy and it takes a while for her to talk.  A girl proposed friendship, an offer which Eleanor immediately accepted (one of the only things she said so far) and then the girl exclaimed, “Well, you are friendly.” 

I’m going back for lunch today, but I think she’ll have a positive (if overwhelming) day. 

I am optimistic about the whole experience.  The school looks and feels a lot like our school back home = older, kind of beat up, yet well loved.  There are a few significant differences, not the least of which being the class size.  We’ve moved from a 27 student classroom in Oregon, to a 17 student classroom in Texas.  That’s a difference!   It is confusing to me, in fact, the differences I’m seeing.  They have smaller class sizes with a similar overall student body population AND a smaller building (this has required the addition of mobile buildings to keep the class sizes small, so, they're going out of there way to keep class sizes small).  They have more of everything.  They have science experiments, great social studies discussions (it is black history month, and you can tell that here), music, PE, real art, library, computer lab, and Spanish ... all at least once a week (more than once a week for some of them).  Wha?!?!  Fingers crossed that all will continue so positively.