Austin House – Page 8 – The Hermits' Rest

Being an Austin Tourist

Yesterday I had to take off work to do some boring personal stuff, but in the end, there was lots of time in the day left over. Since I will be out of town for Anita’s birthday on Saturday, I decided to take her to some places in Austin she’d never been. The first was the Contemporary Austin museum at Laguna Gloria, which I just shared some photos of flowers from.

I hadn’t been to Laguna Gloria since some art classes when my children were small. It’s changed a lot since then, and they have added some fancy new, but not quite finished, buildings there, like a cafe (we had a nice light meal from there, though we had to eat in the car due to no seating), a cute gift shop (where Vlassic got a new “dress collar”), and such.

I’m quite proud of my new beaded leather collar. Call me fashion dog.

But we were there for the sculptures (and plants), so off we went. The day got warmer and warmer, but we persevered.

All the modern sculptures were interesting, at least, and some I just loved. The settings in and among all the native and other plants was really pleasant. Plus, I’m just glad there is still a little space where people can see Lake Austin from the ground. Most of it is full of giant, fancy houses.

My favorite one didn’t photograph well, but it was party of a trio of pieces hanging from one of the many huge trees on the property. I guess you’ll just have to go to see it.

Let’s Pretend It’s Autumn!

Sure, it was 102 again today. But today was the day Anita and I rewarded ourselves for all the garage cleaning and wine room construction. Yes, we went to Pier 1 to check out the fall decor.

Wait!

I forgot to share last week that Anita got a special accent for the wine room, a beautiful Tiffany-style lamp she found on Overstock.com. She also got a few wine books. Fancy.

Back to Seasonal stuff

Isn’t this post riveting so far? I’m pretty dulle when not ranting.

Anyway, we knew we wanted to get a couple more of the glass pumpkins Pier 1 does every year. Other than that Anita had her eye on an acorn made out of leaves, and I wanted a calm autumn wreath.

This one will join others in the wall shelving.

Wine Room Accomplished!

You may recall that we started putting our wine cellar/shoe closet together a couple of weeks ago. Since then, the office area has been in a bit of disarray with lots and lots of bottles stashed here and there, plus pieces of IKEA furniture.

So, yesterday, since I had to leave work early, I invited my strapping son, Declan, to drop by and pick up his next batch of treasures that I unpacked from the garage (lots of vintage albums and some 45s). While he and Riley were here, he was also kind enough to help me put the cabinet together properly. It helps, I think, to invite a non-drinker over to your furniture-building events.

Light shines from my son’s head as he expresses pride in his work.

I did assist by un-doing some of the things that we’d done haphazardly before, when we didn’t have all the parts, but Declan jumped right in there and started assembling like a pro. Wow, I gave birth to an assembler! He even got the fancy doors on the cabinets to do their fancy thing.

Solar Sophistication: You Can Follow the Panels

Finally my solar panels are talking to me! They aren’t saying much yet, but that’s okay! I have my own dashboard and everything!

Hey, hold on here, those gray ones aren’t working.

Wait a minute, I’ll take that back. It’s telling me that half of our panels aren’t communicating with the “Envoy,” which appears to be the communications device. Well named. The people who called did say someone is coming to look at our system, so maybe that’s why! (By the way, everyone who works at Momentum Solar has been SO nice to me and Lee.)

The much better interface! And it’s from later in the day.

Suna loves the sun. As long as she wears sunscreen.

I am just happy to see that we’re making electricity on our roof! It’s a thrill. Go Sun!

I like that the interface tells you what the weather is each day, so you can see how clouds affect the production. That, of course, assumes that we ever have another cloudy day.

If you are a solar energy nerd, you might want to follow the Bobcat Lair house online. I’ll see if I can get the link to the Hermits’ Rest, too! I can’t imagine anyone would care, but there it is!

I Also Suck at…Mailing Stuff

Yesterday I wrote about all the letters I received in the late 70s and early 80s. I guess I was a better correspondent back then. Probably writing a letter was a great way to procrastinate all the reading I had to do during my endless years of higher education, because the minute I got out of grad school, the productivity ended.

For a while I would write Christmas letters and send cards, especially when my kids were little. And I did always write long letters to the kids’ grandmother in Ireland, since it was too expensive to phone them.

If I don’t mail things from now on, Angry Supergirl will glare at me. Actually, she’s glaring at me now, because I left her in a box for over a year.

But wow, I stink at mailing things to people these days, or at least I did for a decade or more.

Boxes of Tears: I Found the 80s

Why do people keep their old love letters, breakup letters, heartbreaking letters…? Heck if I know. To be honest, I didn’t realize I was one of those letter-saving people until tonight.

Anita and I were doing our weekly box opening, when we found a box of a variety of personal treasures. I found Lee’s first novel. I found some cards from my children. I found this box, all sealed up.

I did not recognize it. It was just a box. Anita said it was a treasure, so I came to look. I opened it and thought, huh, letters. They must be from my mom and grandmother, because no one ever wrote me.

Continue reading “Boxes of Tears: I Found the 80s”

Memory Lane Is Very Dusty

I thought my son who’s still speaking to me was coming over this evening, but when we realized he wasn’t coming, Anita and I had only one thought: let’s unpack more boxes! Sure, it was over 100 degrees again, but we hydrated and got to unpacking.

Anita is very proud of her hard work. Now we can park n the garage and be able to open doors on both sides!

Unfortunately, the first box we went after contained a faux flower arrangement that had been sitting in the “art niche” at our Braesgate house for close to 20 years. I’m thinking it hadn’t been dusted ~~very often~~ ever. I think we lost a couple of years of lung health as we picked up fake flower after fake flower, trying to find what was at the bottom of the box.

I’m certainly glad what was at the bottom was my Charlie Brown pottery vase. (He was a relative on my mother’s side who used clay from near the St. John’s River to make raku ware, which it turns out was a little brittle, so the top of my vase broke.) By the way, somewhere around the house is a Christmas ornament he made – the article I linked to above said Vice President Mondale had one in his house, too.

Wine Cellar vs. IKEA

Yesterday was totally lost for blogging, since I had zero minutes of downtime all day. Not that it was bad! I had a wonderful catch-up lunch with my friend and former co-worker, Melissa. We took turns updating each other on the past few months of our lives. I am so happy she loves her new job and is incredibly fit and glowing with inner peace. It’s good to be around people like that!

Once I got home from work (where I was doing fun stuff and figuring out answers to hard problems), the rest of the evening was consumed by trying to put together the new wine/shoe room furniture that had arrived that day.

Russ is all happy here, because he can find all the pins and such to build the first piece of furniture.

We lucked out in that we canceled a meeting of our Hermit Haus coworkers, but Russell, my former co-worker and business partner, had already blocked off the time, so he showed up to help us decipher the instructions for the two items of furniture we’d bought.

Weird Beverages! A Change of Pace

I promised I’d write about something less controversial today. And I will. Before I start, I want to share that I took my post about getting to know people unlike myself and wrote a version for real estate investors. It needs to be said there, too, so we can all meet our goals.

Okay. Tea.

My workplace in Austin is a hotbed of foodies and coffee/tea fanatics. That’s given me the chance to try many different beverages through the years. Last week it was both tea and coffee. Tea first.

Chriztine was in town, and while here she checked out one of our many Asian markets. There she found an unfamiliar ball-shaped tea that she didn’t know what it was. So of course, she bought some.

Hey, if you know what this says, let me know. Isn’t the dried lime cool?

It turned out to be tiny dried limes stuffed with black tea. It was a kind she liked. But there were no brewing instructions. The first time, she put the whole ball in hot water, thinking maybe it would bloom or something.

We Have a Wine Cellar!

Anita and I are very proud of ourselves. What was a giant mess you couldn’t enter, only a few weeks ago, is now well on its way to becoming a dream wine cellar/shoe closet.

Shoe closet?

Yeah. The Master closet in the Bobcat Lair house turned out way too small, even after I got rid of most of my clothes when I moved here. I put in a shoe rack and other storage stuff, but all I do is fall over things.

My real estate business partner, Carol, suggested I store shoes in the wine room, and suddenly it made sense. I’m always in the office when I leave for work and when I come home, so why not put the shoes there?

Continue reading “We Have a Wine Cellar!”