Diana and me

Here is Keaton - Happy Boy!

Stephanie and I are testing something.

Lucky us

The other day Erin was telling me how McKenna had gone to work with them, wearing her scrubs and sporting a shortened stethescope around her neck. She checked out the new kittens that they were fostering until homes were found. Then she went out into the waiting room and made a big hit out there. I know Mc Kenna loves going to work with them and I thought how lucky she was to be able to go to her parents' workplace, and how lucky they were to be able to share their work with her. Then it dawned on my that I had had much the same experience. I thought of all the years we spent running through (and working at) Ward Buick. I'm not sure I ever really appreciated that experience until I saw it in the context of McKenna. And I wonder what it meant to Pa-Pa to have us at his workplace.....undoubtedly charming all who entered!!!!

And in fact - this photo just in

One is the back burn fires from the weekend and the other is late yesterday. Hot spots, but seems to be dying down.

Fires in Texas

I imagine you all have heard the news about fires in Texas. It is extremely dry and I am keeping an eye on the area around us, but we never know when something might start up. You can see from the photo that the McDonald Observatory (affiliated with the Astronomy Dept. here at UT) is in the thick of it. The news reports are not exactly accurate all the time (what's new) and they variably report many more houses and buildings being destroyed than my friends at the Observatory report. The pictures above are from a week ago, but now they are doing back burns, which seem to be working, and the pictures look worse, but are actually more hopeful.

And that's my news today.

Red clover-red clover, let rover come over

Red clover on Sage Hill Road

April flowers

I have a friend that is a master gardener (actually I have a few who are master gardeners) and every year they have an open house for everyone to see their yard/garden at its best. Since I just saw it last Saturday, I told him that I would not be coming to his open house because I needed to stay home and work on my yard :-). As all of you who own a home know, there is always plenty to do to and around the house. Hopefully this weekend I can make a dent in my many "home improvement" projects, not to mention mowing the yard. In fact, I hope to spend most weekends this Spring and Summer working on things around the house. We'll see how that works out. I could put a list down of things I want to do so you could mark off my progress, but that would be just too much pressure. The good thing is I really like working on the house and yard. Of course I like working at UT too so there you go. Hard to set priorities when it is all so much fun. I took a picture or Tom's and Vicki's pool (fish and iris, not people), but it is on my camera, not my phone, so I will try to upload it this weekend.

I have been singing with an a Capella group for about 4 months now on Thursday evenings and I am really glad I joined it. I am not as aggressive as I might should be, but I'm getting there. It has been a while since I have sung complicated harmonies, but it is starting to come back to me. One of my fellow singers seems to always be able to get the harmonies quickly (in fact we rely on her), but I found out last night that is because when we get a new piece, she goes home and works it out on the piano for hours until she has it down pat. We laugh because she really can follow the harmonies well, but she often goes flat and then has to listen to me to see what the pitch should be (not that I am good at pitch, but I stay pretty close). We do a variety of music - African songs, Jewish songs, spirituals, a little pop music, even a couple from a Wicca group - just because we like the tunes, not because we want to start a practice :-). Next Thursday we are going to the Austin hike and bike trail to sing because the City of Austin has put pianos out on the trail for a month as part of a performance art thing. That should be amusing.