The tide in Puget Sound

I did not realize that Puget Sound had such large tides.

Here is a photo we took this morning at about 9:30:
 

Same area around 3:30 or so:
 

Amazing!

Mexican Freetails

Texas is pretty well known for our Mexican Freetail Bats. There is an enormous colony in Austin underneath one of the bridges, and here in Houston we have a pretty good size colony under the Waugh Steet Bridge over Buffalo Bayou. I saw them leaving there one night back in the spring as I was driving home. It was amazingly impressive.

Here in our neighborhood, a small colony has taken up residence in a condo complex not too far from our house. We see them coming home every morning while we walk Blaze.

They are hard to photograph, but I tried:

 

 

 

 

There are hundres of bats coming home to roost. You can smell them as you walk by, you can hear their wings flapping, and you an imagine that you hear the squeaking.

It is a fun thing to see everyday.

4th of July!

Doreen and I had a great long weekend. We started when I picked up some Yellowtails and we roasted them for supper on Friday:


They were twice as good as they looked.

The, on Saturday we went to see Midnight in Paris (on our 11:00 AM show. T here were only four other people at the show) and we just loved it. While I never expect anyone to read much of this blog (it is more for me to remember things) one item that would probably be apparent is that we love Paris. The first year we went to Paris together was 1998, and we have been every calendar year since then but one (thoug we made it up by going twice the year before and the year after). It was a great movie.

Then, that night we had dinner with two dear friends at Indika, one of the most interesting restaurants in the city. I started off with Mulligatawny Soup, and ended with Chicken and Green Masala. A nice Verdejo accompanied that and we were very happy.

On Sunday, we had rented the new True Grit movie. I am a huge fan of Charles Portis, and this movie clove close to the book. I would recommend both. Then we had summer sauage sandwiched fdrom Held's in Slinger, outside of Milwaukee. You can't get any better summer sausage than that.

Finally, today a good friend of mine was generous enough to invite us to his ranch in Gay's Hills, just outside of Brenham.



You can see that it was a beautiful place








I think that we behaved ourselves well enough that we will be invited back.


We had a great time.

Finally, we came home, and were able to enjoy the waning moments of the holiday with our pets.

Blaze:



and Djimmah:



Little Gallo was sleeping elsewhere.

Now, we are about to listen to the fireworks.

Happy 4th of July!

Roasted Fish

Doreen and I recently went to a new doctor for a checkup. She recommneded (among other things)that we eat more fish.

Traditionally, I have been reluctant to cook fish. I find it a a little creepy. But after cooking sardines with great success, I decided it was time to use a New York Time recipe to roast a fish.

I left work a little early yedterday (about 5:30) and stopped at the brand new Whole Foods on Waugh (it opened on June 23rd) and talked to the fish monger. What a great guy! He recommended these beautiful Yellowtails:



Look at the clear eyes!


Here it is, dressed:


I forgot (as usual) to take a photo as soon as we took it out of the over, but here it is, sort of picked over:


and here are the bones:


We will do this again!

M3 back. As good as new

The whole effort to get the M3 back on the road again as taken quite a bit of time. You may recall that I suffered a disater on May 28th while returning from the farmer's market.

Since then, I have been in almost daily contact with GEICO (my Insurance Company) and Advantage BMW (my dealer and repair shop). We had to go through a couple of iterations of insurance inspection before the car was ready to be delivered this last week Thursday.

I was pretty happy, but my insurance adjuster was on vacation. I called his mobile phone, which pointed me to another adjuster. I call that phone, and she told me who would be taking over for my assigned adjuster while he was on vacation.

I called THAT fellow, and he told me he would not be able to get to my car until Monday or Tuesday. Oh! I was depressed.\

I asked if there was any way he could take a quick look, and pointed out that I have been without my car for quite a while. He said probably not. I thanked him, and hung up.

Imagine my surprise (and joy!) when he called up the next morning and told me my car was ready to go. I arranged to leave work early, and dropped off my cute little bug, and made it down to my dealership around 4:00 PM.

There it was! I got it home to my garage (gingerly) and took a photo or two:





That same day, we saw a baby mockingbird in our Lace Bark Elm in front of the house:


One more shot of the car:


I have to give a shout out to GEICO, in particular Gifford H, and Advantage BMW, in particular Gustavo Q. Both companies, and individuals were a joy to deal with, kept me informed, answered any questions I had, and really worked with me to get my car back.

Thanks!

Wisconsin

Last weekend Doreen and I flew up to Wisconsin to celebrate some birthdays, and the fact that my Three Sisters were running in a 10K race in Green Bay.

Sadly, one of my sisters had a stress fracture in her foot, and was not able to run. But her daughter ran in her stead:

They all finished, and did quite well. Melanie (the one on the right) placed 26 out of thousands and thousands of entrants! We hope that she will be the next Rosie Ruiz (ha! That is a joke. I recall that in the original version of Trivial Pursuit, one of the questions was "Who did not win the Boston Marathon in 1980. There are about 6 billion right answers to that question, and only one wrong answer: Jacqueline Gareau)




But after the race, the festivities began. My sister Abbie hosts Thanksgiving in this house every year for most of the nearby family. (I come only occasionally.) SO she is well prepared to entertain many, many people. You can see a small piece of the crown here:


Part of the fun of such a gathering is playing games. Here, our nephew Brian Larson is golfing in the living room. He was playing through from a bad shot. Nobody seemed to mine. (in reality he was getting golfing advice for a tournament in which he was in his CEO's foursome. He has never played golf before, and we were "helping")


Gus is Abbie's very tolerant and ever supportive spouse. Here he is making crappy ceviche. Maybe that is croppie ceviche. Some sort of ceviche, at any rate. It was delicious!


This is a robin's nest on Abbie's back porch. That color, I believe, is Robin's Egg Blue


Much of the time in Green Bay was spent waxing poetic. We all had many things to say, and the worst part was waiting your turn to say it!


These are some of the crazy inlaws. Laurie, (Matt's Wife), Jesse (Eric's Wife) and Doreen (my wife). They all wanted to risk their life on the Zippin Pippin. Crazy, I know.


They survived.


More family fun. Ree, Laurie, Madeline, Abbie, and Jesse. Jesse is a very talented Fiber Artist. She showed off some of her creations at the party, and they were snapped up by discerning consumers.


This is Eric. He is holding a rasher of Bear Bacon (Jesse's boss gave it to her). Eric pointed out that the bear bacon (which was delicious, by the way) was shot out of a jerky gun. Enough said.


We were lucky enough to even have the Wyoming branch of the family in town! This is in-law Beth and brother Chas.


Little Joe Cool (Ben) was everyone's sweetheart at the party.


Matt and Eric. (Eric loathes to have his photo taken without giving a big thumbs up)


The other great thing about family gatherings is that nobody minds if you just walk out with some of the furniture. Here is Matt, who had his eye on this chair for a while, and then just put it in his car.


Here are the seven sibs. Mark, Ree, Chas, Abbie, Matt, Mel, and me.


I had to slip in a self portrait in Abbie's back yard.


The house I grew up in (isn't there a country song about this?) 714 Pierce.


My namesake


We stopped by brother Matthew's Quickrete plant on the way to the airport. Nice!


And here he is in his office.

Next year in Santa Fe!

Sent from my niece.

My Niece sent me this link after seeing my rental car:

YouTube - The Largest Auto I Could Afford: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

I love it.

My ride. The yellow one

From my Android phone

At last, some good news

The engine on the car is OK. So now (all) it needs is a new transmission, along with the oil pan and various under-bits.

I should have the car back sometime next week.

Yeah!