Houston Rodeo + Austin Kite Festival

We had a great weekend visiting Aunt Amy and the Houston Rodeo, and we made it home in time to see the kite festival in the park near our apartment.  Check out our picasa photos and DON'T MISS the Mutton Bustin' video in the post from March 3rd.  You won't regret it.

Houston Rodeo and Livestock Show

Zilker Kite Festival, Austin - March 4th

Eleanor in the Houston Rodeo!

Eleanor tries Mutton Bustin' at the Houston Rodeo!  No kidding!  I am so proud of her for trying this!  Eleanor is #21, and she's wearing a lot of pink, so watch long enough to see her.  The crowd went wild when she survived the little turn the sheep gave, and she lasted longer than any other kid before her so everyone was pretty excited.  She came in about 5th place out of 25 kids, had a great time, and wants to join the real rodeo next time.  Especially once she learned she could win a belt buckle.  A shout out to Aunt Amy for turning us on to this (and for keeping the video rolling while I held my breath).

Happy Texas Independence Day!

On this day in 1836, during the battle of the Alamo and before the victory at San Jacinto, settlers in Mexican Texas hastily adopted the Texas Declaration of Independence thus creating the Republic of Texas and officially (even if not yet physically) liberating themselves from Santa Anna's dictatorship.

Of course, Santa Anna didn't concede to this declaration until after the embarrasing 18 minute long battle at San Jacinto  (the Texans snuck up on the Mexican army during their afternoon siesta).  There is an obelisk style monument on the site, like the Washington Monument in D.C. -- only, naturally, this one in Texas boasts being 15 feet taller than that one and thus the tallest in the world.  Texans don't like to brag or anything, unless of course it is about them and then, well...  The Republic of Texas lasted only 10 years, but it looms large in the history and hearts of Texans.  I can't tell you how many times over the course of my childhood I was told, "We were our own country once.  Remember that." 



hoisted on a crane just for today

Local KUT radio introduced an NPR piece today, imagining a modern day Texas secession. 

cultural attire in the Modern Republic!



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!