Another metropolitan park

 

 

 

The main difference for this one being that it’s in London.

 

 

Austin

 

 

Metropolitan parks

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’re off to see the wizard

 

 

 

 

Now we’re in Austin.

 

Who doesn’t love a good Turkey Vulture

 

 

 

Such graceful soaring birds.

 

A dihedral wing angle for stability.  Thinking back to all those years ago, we were mimicking that configuration with the hand-launch gliders we built.

 

There are vultures here year-round, but there are a lot of them in the winter.  They roost in any forested area.

 

 

And they’re way more attractive from a distance.

 

 

 

College football

 

 

Texas was winning in a blowout, so they put their 3^rd string quarterback in for the fourth quarter.  The stadium erupted in the loudest ovation of the game.  That backup quarterback is Arch Manning, grandson of football royalty Archie Manning.  Payton and Eli are his uncles.  He’s 18 years old.  Six four and 212 pounds.  He’s got the size.  He was the number one rated high school prospect last year and he went to the Longhorns.  He has been quietly studying and practicing in the background all season.  We got to watch his first incomplete pass in college football.  Then his first completion.  Then a scramble for a first down.  A 3^rd down conversion.  A 4^th down conversion.  A 91-yard touchdown drive.

 

That was so much fun.  We’ve been waiting all season.  It was hilarious when the commentators described Arch as having the football smarts and arm talent of his two uncles, but he was also athletic.  How funny is that, that two super bowl champion quarterbacks would be described as not athletic.  They were referencing that the younger Manning would not be confined to the pocket like the uncles were, pocket passers even in their prime.  Arch has the added weapon of being able to move and threaten defenses with his legs as well.

 

And can you imagine the football education that kid got growing up in that football family.

 

And then

 

 

There is the Thanksgiving turkey coma.

 

Even if it’s just from leftovers.

 

 

Henry is actually a kitty cat

 

 

We can tell because any pile of warm laundry fresh out of the dryer that hits the front room to be folded is immediately claimed by him as the best spot in the house.

 

 

Thanksgiving Day

 

 

Cool calm and sunny outside.  Warm comfy and aromatic inside.  Food cooking all day.  An eight-pound turkey for just the two of us, and our two friends who are recuperating a broken bone at home in their place.  We take a couple plates to them.  Football.  Birds at the feeders.  Plenty to be thankful for.  The Christmas Tree on the deck getting decorated.  Our tradition at the Louisville House was to light the Christmas lights Thanksgiving Night.  We continue that tradition here, even with our lesser scale.  Speaking of scales, I hope everyone remembered to set their bathroom scales back five pounds to Thanksgiving time like we did.

 

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

 

 

Cactus fruit

 

 

 

 

I don’t know all the different kinds of cactus that can grow here in Texas.  This looks like it might be a Peruvian Apple Cactus (Also known as Night Blooming Cereus).  We had a small one in our yard for a few years.  It really does only bloom at night, and each bloom only lasts for one night.

 

I read that the fruit is edible and tasty for humans or wildlife.  The cactus gets really big, and this fruit is way out of reach for me though.

 

 

Evening light

 

 

 

 

 

 

Texas Firebush

 

 

 

It’s the one in the middle.  Hummingbirds and butterflies love it.

 

Every January, I cut it back to knee-high to keep it compact and healthy.  Every summer it grows back even bigger.  We’ll see if it gets taller than the house next year!

 

Thanksgiving

 

 

The first batches of cranberries.

 

Judy offers homemade cranberries to anyone that wants them.

 

A lot of people want homemade cranberries.

 

Alfred Hitchcock?

 

 

At the parking lot for the bridge to Mexico.

 

 

A pretty good flock of cowbirds.  They like to stand around in the shade of the parked cars.  They also like the granaries in the area.  Bits get spilled as the grain is transferred to and from the silos.

 

The car

 

 

 

It’s a 1937 Chevrolet.

 

It matches the one I found on the internet that just sold for $10K (I’m surprised it didn’t sell for more.)

(Not my photo.)

 

… except the car in my photo looks to be in better shape.  We can tell it was driven to the parking lot where it sat yesterday, by the bugs on the windshield.

 

There are photos of the interior, engine, and undercarriage of the one on the internet if you want to check out the state of automotive technology in 1937.  The engine sure looks simple.

 

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1937-chevrolet-master-town-sedan/

 

 

Today’s challenge

 

 

Can you identify this beauty?

 

 

 

Imagine being able to walk up a wall or walk upside down across the ceiling

 

 

 

It’s all about having the right hairs and bristles on your feet.  With those, tiny surface imperfections become footholds.  This little gecko walks across the ceiling of our deck.

 

How cool would that be to walk up a wall, or across the ceiling?  I think I want to have the right hairs and bristles on my feet.  The whole process might have something to do with weight to size ratio though, or strength to weight, in which case I might be disappointed after all, and left with fuzzy feet for no reason.

 

Follow-up

 

 

Five years since the heart bypass surgery.  Did a nuclear stress test on the treadmill for the cardiologist here in the Valley a couple weeks ago, and we had the follow-up appointment today.  He wrote a happy face on the test results he handed me.  No sign of any restriction to the blood flow in and around my heart.

 

Yay me.  And yay, for real, for the heart surgeon team in Colorado that spent most of their day in my chest replumbing with veins from my left leg.  Today’s report suggests they did a fine job.

 

 

Football

 

 

Watching the Broncos is practically aerobic.  We’re exhausted.

 

We thought all was lost until Judy thought to get out the Bronco Poncho and we waved it in front of the TV.  That barely pulled us through!

 

Football is so much easier to watch when we’re not so invested in one of the teams.  Go Broncos!

 

 

The man in the moon

 

 

I look at the moon.

 

I don’t see a man.  I’ve heard about the man in the moon since I was a kid, but does anybody really see a man in the moon?

 

If I squint, maybe I see it.  Does the man in the moon look like a pumpkin face carved by a 5-year-old; a cartoonish open mouthed face?  That’s the best I can make out.  That’s kind of weak.  Surely, it’s something better than that!

 

Raptors

 

 

Raptors are fearsome hunting machines.  Flying carnivores.

 

This particular raptor is an American Kestrel.  Fearsome, if you happen to be smaller than he is, which would be about the size of a robin.

 

 

Winter weather

 

 

The patterns change.  After a long hot summer where the weather doesn’t vary from day to day, we enter the winter pattern with periodic weather fronts that roll through from west to east, sometime remaining north of us and sometimes plowing right through where we live.

 

Yesterday was warm weather in the 80s.  Today and all weekend, 60 degrees and rain.

 

By the end of next week, back in the 80s again.

 

Cycling between cool and rainy to warm and sunny in the 80s.  Not a bad way to spend our time until next March when the weather fronts go away and we settle back into hot and humid.

 

Time travel

 

 

That’s what the trip to Phoenix was.  Hanging out with Austin was cool.  16 years old.  He’s practically an adult.  Matt was that age once.  Arie is a tweener.  She’s 9.  At one moment fully engaged in a screaming match with the 5-year-olds, and the next involved in a philosophical discussion about how the world works, and how it should work with the closest adult.  Yeah.  Becky.

 

The little ones.  A blazing combination of running laughing crying climbing hugging screaming and talking.  All pretty much at once.  A person doesn’t get any one of them for very long without all the others.  And without the inconvenience of us actually being responsible for the parental refereeing, we got to huddle in the center of, and enjoy the benefit of, the little kid hurricane that is Matt and Lindsay’s house.

 

We got to relive and enjoy all these stages at once.

 

 

What big ears

 

 

 

A desert Jackrabbit.

 

Exciting times

 

 

 

We came home!

 

Back to Way South Texas.  Our own house and our own puppies!