Hi everyone. I have been down with some health issues lately so I'm not publishing regularly but I just had to share this bit of news with you in case you can join us tomorrow night at the local library. This is Mark's second presentation and it ties in with the book #2 he's been working on about how to use different types of records to confirm the identities of individuals being researched. He's presented this one already in Corpus Christi and San Antonio and those went very well. It's always exciting for me to see how he helps other researchers find new avenues to explore in order to get beyond roadblocks they may have encountered.I'm feeling better and plan to be at this event so I hope you will be there, too! If you are, please be sure to introduce yourself if we haven't met. I love to meet new people who follow the blog. Well, I just love to meet new people anyway, even if they don't read the blog. :-)
Thank goodness it's Friday tomorrow. The week has flown by and I sure feel tired so I'm just going to say goodnight. But before I do that, here's a shot of a sunset I shot while visiting another potential bee yard with Mark recently. What a great sky we saw that night. For more of this week's great sky shots, be sure to visit the Sky Watch page. Good night folks!
Did everyone survive the crazy weekend? I hope you had a nice one with the beautiful weather! For Valentine's Day, I received a beautiful arrangement of flowers from one of the nicest flower shops in town - Kolbe Flower Shop on Austin Street. I love their quaint shop and the service is awesome there. They also did an arrangement for our wedding and Mark's gotten me numerous gifts there (thanks honey!). Below is one of the pretty flowers from my special gift. :-)
Are you ready for tomorrow? If not, you should get in your car and head over HEB on Court Street. Along the way, you will see vendors selling flowers, perfume, gift baskets, balloons and who knows what else. I saw all of that as I drove to HEB to pick up some groceries and flowers for Tet tomorrow. These are shots at the store - there were a lot of folks looking and buying Valentine's Day goodies. I liked the orchids they had (right side of the top shot). Cupid was good to me and brought my flowers early :-). Thanks hon!
Does anyone know what these birds are called? I don't recall ever seeing them here in our yard before last weekend and I am fascinated by them. They're gorgeous. And they provided me with my first photography session in a long while. I saw a bird commotion while looking out the kitchen window and after a few shots from inside, I went out, accompanied by Smokey. That was interesting.
Got some great shots and a cool video of them (on YouTube if you want to see it) doing their bird thing, whatever that was. I couldn't tell if they were drinking or eating. I have never seen birds gather like that in that hole in the pecan tree. I have, however, seen squirrel activity up there. Perhaps the birds got into a stash hidden by the squirrels. Not sure and it's too high up for me to check. Darn.The beautiful blue sky day last just Saturday. It's been cold, gray and rainy since Sunday and we are all ready for some sunshine. The great news is that the rain will hopefully mean gloriously rich fields of color as the wildflowers bloom this year. I'm hoping for millions of wildflowers. I miss them so and our drought last year meant very few flowers. It was so sad. Here's to a better year this time around. Speaking of starting off a new year, guess what Sunday is? NOT just Valentine's Day. Guess.
So here's a sight you just don't see everyday, right? Well that's what I thought last week when the goats had gotten out from a nearby field and were grazing on the luxurious field across from our mill. At that time, there was too much traffic to stop and get a shot. THIS week, they are at it again! And since they were right next to the road, I just stopped at my stop sign, lowered my passenger window and snapped a shot or two. It made me laugh to see them. Reminds me of that Brady Bunch episode with the goat in the attic...
If you haven't been to our new Durango's, then I would recommend it. Very yummy breakfast, great service with a great smile and a very inviting environment in which to enjoy your food. Mark took me to breakfast this morning before we both went our separate ways to our separate work. This is located near HEB, behind the Baytown restaurant, which we haven't been to yet but a friend of mine said he and his wife enjoyed the food there and recommended it also. I'm beginning to think I am turning this into a tour of food/restaurants. :-) But that's part of the fun of exploring our little town. Now, if I could just see a great Thai or Vietnamese place...
Today we had a gorgeous day though a bit on the nippy side. Check out our gorgeous blue sky! We had a lovely lunch with wonderful friends at a Mexican restaurant I had not tried before, Casa del Sol (very good chicken flautas, great service and clean environment). Afterwards, we stopped by the office supply store in town to pick up some organization tools - hanging folders, folder bins and a label maker! Isn't it cute?
Technology and the convenience it affords us these days continues to amaze me on a daily basis. This gadget was pretty affordable, compact and required no special software to be loaded on your computer. Very nice. I don't like bogging down computer performance with a ton of applications on the hard-drive. Anyway, it was so easy to use! You plug it into the USB port and it pops up a window and you start typing your labels. Though not a fancy model, you can still edit with simple graphics and font styling. Amazing. We are now organizing like crazy. Well, Mark is. :-) I SHOULD be organizing. Instead, I am making soup! One of my favorites that I have not made in a while - lima bean and pork riblets soup. I'll let you know how it goes. I posted about it in January 2008 on La China blog if you would like to see what the soup looks like.
Happy Friday everyone!! :-) I was a bit under earlier this week but thankfully it was just a 24 hour bug and not that yucky stomach virus going around (knock on virtual wood). Yikes. That one sounds bad though a friend of mine said he lost six pounds and used it as a launching pad for his purge and the beginning of hardcore dieting. What a great way to look at a stomach virus, right? lolHere's a sweet new friend I made while I was photographing Mark out at the bee yard at My Father's Farm. I've seen this horse from afar but last week he actually came over and let me say hi and pet him a bit. He seems very calm and peaceful and he comes over to check us out now and then when we are looking at the bees.This is one of the wonderful things about living in a small town like Seguin and being very near "the country." You can drive a few minutes and see some great landscape and all sorts of farm animals. And wild ones here and there. It's very peaceful and I enjoy it despite missing San Antonio and other cities of my past. But I only miss them occasionally. :-)
To us, that is! Hi everyone. I wanted to get a quick post in before I head to bed. It's been a busy week and an even busier day as we spent most of it tending to the bees at the farm location. That was a lot of fun. I had not seen any of the bees in over a month since Mark checks on them during the week typically and I'm at work those days.We've been traveling quite a bit lately to get supplies and equipment ready for this year's beekeeping activities. This last trip took us to Georgia but we took a detour to visit my side of the family in Florida. It was wonderful to see them even if it was just for an evening and the next morning. This is a shot from my parents' front yard and in the shadows, you can make out Lake Louisa. Very pretty. So yea, I know it's not Seguin. But since I wasn't in Seguin this week, I've got to share this one with you.I hope you all have had wonderful weeks and that your weekend will be even better! :-)
It's been a while and I realized I had not written since the first of the year! Sorry folks! It's just been busy I guess and time got away from me. I hope everyone's year is getting off to a GREAT start! Our year is wonderful so far and we can't complain.
The weather's actually been rather exciting this winter. For one thing, it's actually COLD. I've been here almost fifteen years now and my body feels it more than when I first got here. It's okay, though, because I love cold weather since that means I get can all layered up and wear my favorite hat and scarves. This week was mild but before this we actually were in the 30s quite a bit with several nights in the 20s. Wind chill lower than that. Cold for south Texas for sure.
The second thing about the weather is that we've been getting plenty of rain! Woo hoo! You know what that means after a brutally hot, dry summer. WILDFLOWERS this year! Last year I was so sad that we had barely a wildflower in the area due to the drought. :-( So let's hope this year will be gloriously lush with blooms! Some of the trees and plants seem to have been hit a little hard by the freezing temperatures while others seem okay. I planted some potted plants recently and luckily they seem to be holding up just fine.
Hope everyone had a wonderful day on this first day of 2010! Did you party hard last night? :-) Hope today found you safe and sound and happy for a fresh new start.Now don't get too excited...Apple's not in Seguin (unfortunately!). I'd be happy if we could start with getting Target here in town. Who knows, maybe with Caterpillar and its affiliates coming to town, we MIGHT be able to finally get more high end retail in town. We'll see.Anyway, we rolled into the new year by having an absolutely marvelous day together on a gorgeous day! The sky was blue as can be and the temperature was wonderful in the 50s. Mark's sister came and hung out for a while and brought a wonderful lintyl soup for us all and then we ran into SA to celebrate a very early birthday for my love. This has been an Apple sort of holiday season for us both. We both now have either an iTouch or an iPhone and LOVE them. Technology can be so darn cool, it is totally amazing! I love it. And the service is pretty darn impressive at the Apple Store. That's just so hard to find these days so it's refreshing.
Happy new year, everyone! Hope you have a very safe and wonderful evening. Be careful out there!Shot this sky last Sunday evening as we were driving out to a friend's home for dinner. It was so spectacular and beautiful. Great thing Mark drove so I could shoot out the window! :-)Check out Sky Watch this week for other great shots.
I hope everyone's had a nice Christmas holiday so far and that you have a great new year coming up soon. Be safe!These are some snowflakes I quilled out of paper I had. Then they were glued to card stock and crafted into a little card for friends and family. Yay! I finally ventured beyond Valentine's hearts like I normally make for folks! :-)I've been having some technical issues these past couple of weeks. Well, quite a few actually, so that's why I have not posted. Hopefully I am on the mend though I seem to be pushing my luck tonight since this post is not looking quite like I planned. So I will say goodnight for now. It's nice to back though.
This was a shot I snapped when I was roaming around, away from the bees that Mark and a friend were placing at My Father's Farm, an organic vegetables farm that is now home to ten of our hives. I haven't had time to take more pictures of the farming operation but I will soon. I have been wanting to take a closer look at what's currently growing in the garden. I know I saw great looking cilantro when we dropped off the bees. :-)Be sure to check out other wonderful sky shots today at the official Sky Watch site! Have a wonderful day, everyone!
We made it to the post office today during lunch so that we can get these boxes shipped off to family and a friend. Today was the last day to ship in time for Christmas using parcel post and even with that they couldn't absolutely guarantee it'd get there in time. This year, we noticed that with priority mail, if our box exceeded certain measurements, they were going to tag on some surcharge. WHAT?? When did that happen?? I guess I should have thought to read the US Postal Service site or something. I just had not heard of that and on some of our boxes, it more than doubled the priority mail cost. Needless to say, those went parcel post. Hmm...might be time to look at FedEx and UPS next year. :-)
Today we attended the CMC Christmas Party and had a very wonderful time. Even during these touch economic times, the company still held to tradition and I think that does a lot for employee morale. We are very active in the community and I am so proud to be a part of it.I won a door prize and so did my friend Sonia! But more than that, I really love seeing everyone together and I always have a great time working the gift table where we distribute gifts to each employee and their family. Fun! I got to work with a friend and I also met someone from another department. I am very thankful for a great group of coworkers at CMC Steel Texas! It's great to be able to enjoy this cool event.
Despite a bit of a slump, I still love my Spurs. Going through pictures for posting, I wanted to share something fun that makes me happy to kick the week off right! Here's my favorite mascot ever - the Coyote rocks and so do the wonderful Spurs. They are a great part of the community, not just in SA but in all the surrounding areas. This was at a fan appreciation event last week and I am really glad we went. That day had been a really rough day for me at work and it lifted my spirits to be with Mark, having fun at the Spurs event. Hope everyone has a great week!
Good morning, everyone! What a wonderful Friday it's going to be for me. I am on VACATION today! Though I'm not traveling anywhere, I have a packed day and a busy weekend lined up for myself and I'm looking foward to some Thien time. It's pretty cold outside and we wait expectantly for some white fluff to fall from the sky. I so miss seeing snow but I'm not going to hold my breath today. I'm just happy it's cold. I can't really get into the holidays if it's 80 degrees! :-)This is my Skywatch shot for this week. This is off FM 775 on the outskirts of Seguin at My Father's Farm, which is a farm growing all sorts of organic veggies they take to local markets. (That's a separate post for sure.) This is the bees' new home and in the shot, Mark and our friend's son, Chris, are unloading the ten heavy hives and placing them on their stands. Here's a shot of them placed -
As some of you know, we recently drove to Mississippi to pick up some bees from JN Russell of Russell Apiaries. Very fun time - roadtrips with Mark are awesome! Snacks, laughs and lots o' bees. But NO stings! Yay! Check out the other Skywatchers also! Great shots this week.
