Guadalupe Regional Medical Center

You know something? I don't think the recession has fully hit Seguin the way it has in other areas of the US. If you look around our little town, you will see a LOT of construction activities, including this project. It's an expansion to our tiny, tiny hospital. I'm very glad to see that it's very modern looking with plenty of windows. The original structure is one story and quite dated. Good for us for modernizing!

We're suppose to get Caterpiller in here but I'm still waiting to see construction. Meanwhile, I have already posted about the GVEC office going up and there's school construction as well. The only thing not moving is the housing market. There are plenty of very nice homes in Seguin that would have flown off the market in about a week if you were shopping three years ago. Now we have some great houses that have had signs in the front yard for a long, long time. Rough time to try and sell. We're very happy sitting tight with our little old house. :)

Sky Watch

I love sunsets. We saw this one on the way home from Dallas the other evening. It's not technically Seguin but it's what I want to share this week. Sorry for the lack of posts. It was pretty busy in Dallas and then we hit the ground running when we got back to Seguin.

Work certainly is interesting and I continue to learn a lot every single day. These days I am working very hard to try and be a better person. I try to be positive and it's not hard most of the time. I am so happy these days and so thankful of all I have that it makes me want to make other people happy or better or anything positive. Even if it's simply a smile or sharing a joke or stopping by for a hug or editing their work for them. And it sounds like a cliche but you know what? It actually ends up making ME feel good to make someone else's day a little better. Anyway, I don't know why I'm all sappy today. I love our new high activity level at work but I do miss my old team and the quiet spells we used to enjoy in our old corner office...listening to music, laughing with friends, working in our little training world...I think those days are gone forever for us.

Be sure to check out other Sky Watch photos this week! There is always a ton of gorgeous skies to check out from other bloggers.

Tomato Plants

It was 87 degrees today. And the allergens were killing me and Mark. Blah. And the Spurs lost to the Rockets by one point. And we went to a Spurs Fan Event but no autographed winnings this year. Oh well. And my head is hurting.

On to better news and a brighter look on things more important...we got tomatoes on the plants!!! Mark pointed out four of them. I love the way they smell right now. When you get close, you can smell the fragrant plants and it's wonderful. Gives me a nice feeling.

Busy week for us with travel here and there. So if you don't see a post for a day or two, that's why. Take care and I hope you all have a great week.

Get well soon, Manu.

We need your energy and your wild, wild games! We lost to the Celtics last night. And Texas just lost to the Dukies. :(

Got pretty warm today again. I was helping Mark out in the yard a bit and I went to check on the bees in the backyard. There were a number of them hanging out at the entrance though I did see many carrying in pollen. I told Mark they were doing something and he came to check them out. He pointed out to me how they were checking out every bee coming and going. And they were pushing out the bees that didn't belong to the hive...ROBBER BEES! Shame on them. Mark says that the bees have the queen's scent and if they don't, then the hive's bees know it and kick them out. That is so cool to me! They sure a interesting and smart little creatures.

Happy Friday

Tonight the Spurs play the Celtics -- GO SPURS!!! First quarter looked pretty good except the last play. Not good. I saw these shoes at the last game we went to this month...cool! I liked them a lot.

I'm so glad today is Friday. It's been another exhausting week but a good one. Yesterday I had some friends do a work intervention...no emailing or working late into the night. LOL. But how am I suppose to get through emails if I don't do that, especially since during the day I spend most of my time in meetings. Hmm. Well, last night I met my best friend in San Antonio and we had the best time catching up after months of not seeing each other! We ate at Pei Wei at Huebner (not impressed though I did like the edamame) and then a great cup of coffee at the Grind, which is in the same shopping center. That Huebner area is crazy! After driving into SA traffic around 6:30p, I am reminded of why I really like living in a small town. No doubt our traffic jams are WAY BETTER than SA's. I miss living there, but not the traffic. :)

Bee update:
It's warm (upper 80s) this week so they are really active. Mark says the bees in the country are doing well. I'm going to have to think of names for our backyard bees and our country bees. :) Oh, maybe I'll call them City Bees (since we live near downtown Seguin) and Country Bees. Ok, so Country Bees are great and Mark saw the first drones. I call them the Queen's Mates. She has lots of them, which is fantastic since that will help our hives grow.

The City Bees are also doing great. As a matter of fact, the other day after work, I went outside to check on Mark as he worked on his shed project and I saw that the bees were very active. They were flying everywhere and all over the hive. Mark reminded me that they were on their "first flight" and I thought it was really neat! Our little baby bees were everywhere. There were so cute...I don't know how to explain it but you notice they are flying differently but you don't know what is it. Well, I didn't. But Mark did. Good thing I got myself a real beekeeper to teach me these things.

Here's a different Bee First: this week, a sweet little bee landed on my arm as we stood on the deck. I remained calm with Mark's coaching and i watched as she wiggled her little body, especially her rear end. And I just kept thinking she's going to sting me. But then she flew off. And Mark said she left me a present...she POOPED on my arm!!!! It was hilarious. I didn't even know bees did that. It wasn't bad but I won't go into details here. If you really want to know, ask me if you see me out and about. LOL. Have a great weekend!

Guadalupe Valley Electric Coop (GVEC)

GVEC is building a new office and it looks great! I can't wait to check it out when they open to the public. What I like is that it's not just another metal building...this one looks nice and that's what we need more of in Seguin. PLUS it seems to be pretty "green." It made me happy to see wind and solar energy set up there and they also had what looked like rainwater collection tanks. I'll investigate more when construction is complete. I love the blades here. Looks cool!

I love breakfast. Anytime.

It's ten o'clock and I'm hungry. And I would love to have this plate in front of me right now. I love breakfast anytime of the day!!! I shot this at our local Int'l. House of Pancakes (IHOP) a few weeks ago. Yum. The Spurs just won. I'm still working on work emails. Well, I took this break to post. And I'm hungry. Oh, I think I wrote that already, right. LOL. Sorry!

I like work. I wish I had more time for everything. I love our training projects. I love meeting and getting to know new people. I love that there are a lot of fun and wonderful people at work. I love that I laugh so hard on so many days that it doesn't even "feel" like work sometimes. I'm a lucky girl.

Okay, back to work. I'm excited about tomorrow. Mark and I made a breakfast date before work. Nice!

One last note. Mark started working his workshop out back. That means he's tearing down the old shed and taking down one of the trees blocking that space. I wish I could be home to help him because it sounds like quite an adventure! What with the ladder falling over, Mark straddling beams like a gymnast and then the "oh, I just hurled myself to the ground once the wood gave way..." WHAAAAT???? He really had me rolling with his stories at lunch time. That man is hilarious.

A Tom & His Hens

Today I saw turkeys just outside the plant -- it was so neat because I've never seen any out in the "wild" before! I was told that the male turkey is called a tom and the females are hens. Learn something new everyday. I liked those names. So in the first picture they are wandering quite peacefully out in the field across from the mill. Occasionally, the tom would puff up; guess it's mating season, perhaps. Anyone know about turkey calendars?



Of course I feel compelled to pull over for photos. I mean really...I'm almost forty and this is the first time I've seen this so no telling how long it'd be before I see turkeys out and about like this. So, I'm amazed and I think it's neat to see this but then I also start to worry about what a nuisance the tom is making of himself. He was attacking every vehicle that passed by slowly enough for him to peck. He was going for the tires. It was getting to be quite a traffic distraction, especially since it was a little after five o'clock and people were leaving the plant. On the one hand, you don't want to hit and kill the bird so you slow down. But on the other hand, if you slow down or stop, he attacks your tires and then you don't know if you should move for fear of killing the crazy bird.



Of course, I think it's hilarious until he spots me and moves in to attack. Those turkeys are NOT pretty up close. LOL, almost as appealing as a goose chasing you down (had that happen before in NC). Anyway, he wasn't a cooperative subject and he was staring me down pretty good so I decided it was a good time to leave. That was a great way to end the day. My friend called to make sure I had seen and photographed the birds and we had a great laugh over it all. I think every work day should end on an interesting note such as this.

HD Nails

Another shot from our Home Depot trip last weekend. I call this the wall of nails. You need a nail? They got it. Well, almost. Mark had one particular nail size, coating and head (not sure if that's the officially recognized name for the top of the nail but I think that's what I heard) that he needed for the bee boxes but HD did NOT have it!!! Wow. All that selection, which is pretty cool, but not the one we need. Mark made do. It's cheaper than ordering it from the special beekeeping catalog.

Saturday morning and I'm enjoying the cold weather for the last day I think. Mark's at a meeting and I'm listening to my La China music selections as I catch up on all my blogs, Flickr, FB and email. I haven't even looked at work since I left work yesterday! I may have thought about it and talked about it, but I did NOT open up email. It's my attempt to not become an extreme workaholic. I hope you all have a great weekend. I need to go outside and take a look at the tomato plants. And it looks like the dang squirrels dug up the rosemary pot on the deck. Grrr...would someone come by and help me get rid of some of them?!?! They drive me crazy digging up everything. :(

Sky Watch Friday

One day a couple of weekends ago, we were on our way to HEB to buy groceries and Mark saw some smoke off in the distant sky and asked if I wanted to go check it out. Of course I said yes. As we got closer to the source, the smoke cloud got bigger and bigger. Finally, we saw what was happening and so we stopped a good distance away so we wouldn't be in anyone's way or in danger and then we watched. It was scary but also pretty fascinating. The firefighters who were on the scene put out the flames finally but not before the fire pushed past into some new areas on the right of the picture. Eventually, the police blocked the roads so people wouldn't keep driving too close. The flames were really high! The swirling smoke was pretty neat looking also.

We are still in a drought BUT this week we actually got over an inch of rain!! Hooray!! It's suppose to rain tomorrow as well, which would be fantastic. AND it's only in the 40s so I am loving it. I love cold weather for many reasons, one of which is that I get to wear a jacket and my favorite black hat so my head stays dry and warm. Next week we are back up in the upper 70s. :(

To see other great sky shots, be sure to check out Sky Watch.

OH....and I almost forgot to say this: Today is my favorite day/date -- Friday the 13th! :) Good day for me typically.

Home Depot

Hi everyone, I'm back from Irving. It was a really productive trip but pretty jam-packed so I didn't have a chance to post. Here's a shot of some of the beautiful flowers currently available at our local Home Depot. I loved looking at them! It is so wonderful to begin seeing the flowers coming out everywhere. AND that means food for bees! :) As a matter of fact, as I was snapping shots of the flowers, I noticed plenty of bees gathering pollen so that made me happy.

About ten or so years ago, Mark and I started working on our old house and we did a lot of work ourselves. We lost count of the number of trips we made to Home Depot...in New Braunfels! That's about 20 miutes from here so imagine how happy we were when we heard that we were getting our own HD! What's funny, though, is that we had finished most of our work by the time the store opened. :) Still, it's great to have them in town as we still have plenty of things to pick up from time to time.

Garden & Yard Work

Today we spent the morning outside since it was a warm day and we have lots to catch up on out there. First we went got three tomato plants to start the garden but I'm sure we'll be putting in more than that soon. The first three plants are residing in the tub again. It's a great garden container still! Then we cleared out the old shed of all the STUFF we have in there so that Mark can demo it, take down the tree in front of it and then start his new workshop. But clearing it out was long overdue and we're both glad we did it. Also worked on one of the flower beds but not the bamboo, despite it being the subject of my photo. I just thought it looked pretty. :) I'm tired. So, thought I'd post an entry and then I must continue to pack and prep for my trip to Dallas next week. Hope you all have a great weekend!

I crown thee...

On a lighter note, have you been to Burger King lately? We had not been in a very, very long time and while we were on the road recently, we needed a quick bite so we gave BK a go. So....when did these cute little nuggets come along? I just thought it was cute and it made me smile. Crown-shape nuggets. Cool.

This evening Mark and I had dinner with a coworker friend who is in town from Dallas -- we had such a great time! And you know what? I was disconnected from cellphone, computer and TV and it was nice! I love technology, of course, but sometimes it IS nice to have a break. Even if the break was only three hours. :)

Wedding Day

Sorry, been busy with work and life. But I'm nostalgic again and thinking of my parents so here's another photo from Vietnam. It is from my parents' wedding day. My mom is sort of in the center of the photo with the white flowers in her hair. The procession is marching over to where my dad was I believe. :) I LOVE looking at their wedding pictures. Everyone was so elegant. I'll see if I can find one of them both after the ceremony. You can visit La China if you want to see a shot of them in their early 20s.

When I look at them back then, it's like they are strangers. Like you're looking into an entirely different time and world. For example, when we came over here to the States, they were in their late 30s. And they had seven kids to care for in a foreign country. Can you imagine what that must have been like for them? I couldn't until I was much older and I have tried to let them know how much I admire what they did and how well we all ended up considering my dad was the only one who spoke English.

What would I have done? Would I have been brave (or crazy) enough to leave my country? Would I have been able to feed nine mouths and clothe us all? Would I have been able to make family vacation happen every summer on a meter-reader salary (and I'm talking driving us all from NC to CA or NC to Canada!)?

Donkeys in the Bush

While Mark was checking on the bees, I was doing my thing -- wandering around taking pictures of him and things around us. I heard sounds behind us and I turned and saw this! It was so funny...do you see both of them?? They just stood there. And I stood there. And we just stared at each other. And then I laughed because it was just weird but funny to have these two donkeys staring at me. They were pretty cute. And what was cuter still was when the girls called them over and they obeyed. Like pets come when you call them (well, most of the time).

A Car in a Tree

Last weekend when we checked on the bees out in the country, we also took a drive around different roads just to be out and about. I nearly missed this shot but thankfully Mark saw it and knew I would want to shoot it so he pulled over. It's always good to have two pairs of eyes looking for interesting things in life. :)

Below is a shot where you can see the entire tree, which has a really great shape to it against the blue sky.

All-Star Dave Stewart

Last night we got in toooooo late to post about the 10th annual "Smokey" Joe Williams Scholarship Banquet but I wanted to let you all know what a fantastic time I had!!! How can I even put all the things I learned and felt here. :-( I don't even know where to begin so I'll just start out by listing a few things I recall that made an impact on me yesterday. And these are things other than what you may already know about the man, like the fact that he won the World Series THREE times.

1. I felt privileged to have had a chance to meet up with Mark and Stew for lunch and that after calling him Mr. Stewart about 4 times, he said I had to call him either Dave or Stew. I liked Stew. That's pretty cool.
2. He is so down to earth, easy to be with and talk with, funny as all get out and just really neat to hang with and get to know. I felt like we had known him for ages instead of a couple of days (well, really just one day for me).
3. He and Mark had me in stitches the entire time I was with them and they made me feel so special. I mean, really....two wonderfully dashing men teasing me constantly about ditching them for a Spurs game....what girl wouldn't feel all warm and fuzzy? lol
4. He has a GREAT sense of humor and his speech was engaging, inspiring, fascinating and just filled with fantastic stories and if you weren't there, I'm sorry for you. If you were there, remember these: players staring up at the moon (same moon as the one at home or not?) and his teammate carrying a 24-inch TV with him during winter-ball so that he can watch "American shows" while in the Spanish-speaking country in which they were playing.
5. He has met the Queen of England.
6. He likes the Three Stooges a lot (Curly was MY favorite) and he's a big prankster. These two things combined actually got him an invitation to sit in the box with the Queen. Again, long story so I wish you were there to hear it at the banquet.
7. When asked what was his proudest moment, he told us a story not about his baseball accomplishments but rather, he shared his experiences of the Bay area earthquake in '89 or '90 and what he did to try and help. This man is just too awesome!
8. He was intrigued by the fact that Mark keeps bees and he had some really great questions about what he now calls Beeology. And then he shared his new knowledge with other people! He was hilarious. He calls Mark the Beemeister. :)
9. He's a caring man to his family and checked on them often. It was nice to see how family-oriented he is.
10. He was so engaging that he made our daughter, Melissa, laugh out loud many times --- I know she had a great time b/c you don't hear that carefree, natural, sweet sound often enough. AND a woman who has shown little interest in the speakers in the past actually had very nice things to say about Stew. Wow. Two hard sells and he nailed them both. We told him we were pretty impressed.

This photo was snapped while San Antonio's KABB sports reporter, Hector Ledesma, interviewed Stew for a news story. I was happy to see them there because for some unfathomable reason, SA media rarely visits our banquet despite speakers like Fergie Jenkins, Monte Irvin, Buck O'Neal and the list goes on...who wouldn't want to hear from these men (even if you weren't a huge baseball fan, these are sports icons!)? Anyway, thank you KABB for sending someone to cover the banquet.

Thanks, honey, for finding yet another wonderful person for us to meet! Let's go to Claremont and make him miss a Lakers game! :)

"Smokey" Joe Williams Scholarship Banquet 2009

Tomorrow night is the big night for baseball fans in Seguin. Mark picked up Mr. Stewart from the airport today and he will be our keynote speaker at tomorrow's banquet. One of the nicest things we enjoy about the banquet is that we get to host the players and really get to know them and their stories. And it's not just baseball stories that they share...their lives, in general, are pretty amazing and it's always a treat to have a few days with them. Hope you can join us tomorrow evening!

And since Mark was entertaining Mr. Stewart, I was sent off the the Spurs/Trailblazers game this evening with a friend. Though I missed Mark, it was also fun to have a girls' night out with my friend! I had a blast Andrea! Especially after I taught you how to properly cheer on the boys and high five for maximum impact. Good job! :) By the way, we had another marvelous game even without two of my favorite players - Tim and Manu. And Tony Parker had 39 points!!! He was amazing after a 37 point game against the Dallas Mavericks last night. I have to give it to him b/c he sure showed up this week. Let's hope the boys keep it up for the Cavaliers, who are in town Friday night. Also, our very own Seguin Sterling Silver Dancers were on hand this evening and I shot a small video bit so I'll see if I can load that up sometime if it is any good. The Coyote danced with them and they looked like they had a blast!

The Old Days

Lately we have been living in the past. What I mean is that I've been looking at old pictures. The digital camera era is super-fantastic BUT I still enjoy flipping through the photo albums once in a while. Some of my college friends started posting old pics on their Facebook pages so I went looking for some of my own in order to share with them. I also found some pictures that my mom brought with us when we left Vietnam; here's one of me. Last year I scanned in four albums worth of black and white photos for everyone in the family. I love looking at them.

Mark's been living in the past, too! He's making one more change in the book but he's pretty much done and it's now on the publisher's site (Janaway Genealogy Publishing) and I am thrilled for him!! [Congratulations, honey!] Mark's book is titled Slave Transactions of Guadalupe County, Texas and you can read a little more about it on Mark's blog about "Smokey" Joe Williams.

Is it Spring yet?

It sure feels like it is! It's been pretty warm lately and things are starting to bloom all around us. Though I do wish for more wintery weather, I must say the days are quite lovely with plenty of sunshine and temperatures in the 70s with little humidity.

This is a redbud in our backyard and as you can see, the blooms are out and will be followed by leaves soon. The one in the front yard is also in bloom as well as the mountain laurel; smells wonderful! I asked Mark if we could do something outdoors this weekend in order to enjoy the wonderful weather...so we checked on our bees and then drove around the countryside a bit. It was really relaxing and a very nice change from the hectic week at work. I will post more of our outting over the next couple of days. :)

Last week I had about sixteen meetings and conference calls. SIXTEEN. That's a lot for me. I'm not used to so many and they really took a bite out of my productivity. I must say, however, that they were all good for the team because we are finally connecting with people and teams that we work with or will work with and it's great to see puzzle pieces fitting together. And I still am loving what I do and that I get to have so much fun while I'm working. It's a real blessing.

Bee update: The Africanized hive is finally dead (we think and hope). The other bees are doing very well and were very active when we checked on them this weekend. If you want more bee talk, I'll post more about them on my La China blog.